Dolphin Tale

Oh sure, this one is capturing America’s collective heart, yet it caused me major pain to watch. When a dolphin washes up on shore caught in a crab trap, an annoying kid (Nathan Gamble) frees it and becomes its best friend. The dolphin’s name is Winter, and the real dolphin that “inspired” this story appears in the film. The dolphin is all kinds of awesome, but everybody else in this thing qualifies as intolerable. The kid actors are atrocious, Harry Connick Jr. seems as if he wants to take a nap, and Ashley Judd probably thought this signified the end of her career. Little did Judd and company know that this would be some kind of hit even though it’s a piece of garbage. Morgan Freeman slums as an eccentric doctor who makes a prosthetic for Winter after a tail amputation. Morgan Freeman should be ashamed of himself. Actually, he doesn’t have to be—I’m plenty ashamed for him.