Sawyer Nelson (Nathan Gamble) is a bit of a loner. He's still stinging from the unexplained departure of his father five years ago, and now his best friend, older cousin Kyle Connellan (Austin Stowell) is about to leave for the military, with hopes that the pay will give him the opportunity to go for Olympic gold. He's also stuck in summer classes, where he's unable to concentrate. On the way to school one day, he passes by the beach, where a fisherman has just come upon a beached dolphin, tangled in the cord of a crab cage. Sawyer has only just cut the dolphin free of the cage when members of the Clearwater Marine Animal Hospital arrive and rescue the dolphin. Before long, Sawyer is cutting classes to swing by the aquarium, where he's snuck in by Hazel Haskett (Cozi Zuehlsdorff), much to the chagrin of her father, Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr.). The friendship between Sawyer and the dolphin, who Hazel has named Winter, is just the beginning of Winter's challenging journey, one centered around the eventual loss of her tail to infection.

Dolphin Tale is one of those movies that sounds like a cliche before you've even heard the entire story. Nothing like the bond between a kid and a dolphin to get those tear ducts going in the most predictable ways, and it's "based on a true story", suggesting the need for the story to be insistently inspirational and life-affirming. Surprisingly, in execution, there's not just a genuine warmth to the movie, but an absence of the treacly, manipulative melodrama that plagues so many "heartwarming" family films. Dolphin Tale may not quite capture the imagination enough to endure as a classic, and it's a little overlong at 113 minutes, but it's a pleasing journey that will enthrall kids fascinating by dolphins and not prompt their parents to check their cell phones.

Admittedly, the ride is a little bumpy at first. Director Charles Martin Smith (best known as an actor, from American Graffiti and The Untouchables) makes the poor choice to open the film with a terrible underwater sequence populated by poorly-rendered CG dolphins. They dance, utterly unconvincingly, through a digital ocean, even stopping to nose at what appears to be sunken treasure. We also learn about Kyle before we learn about Sawyer, a weird choice that briefly leaves the film feeling aimless. Once Sawyer stumbles upon Winter, though, it's all uphill from there. Smith's smartest choice, which gives the movie a crucially important authenticity, is the casting of the real Winter as herself, a decision which frees the movie from any more awful computer graphics (well, mostly), and gives the viewer a chance to form an emotional attachment to a real, live animal. When Sawyer interacts with Winter, it's clear it isn't just Hollywood smoke and mirrors. It also helps that Gamble gives a strong performance, sharing real chemistry with his aquatic co-star.

Smith's other fine choice is allowing the film's many dramas to play out without emphasis. As one will guess immediately based on scenes of Kyle agreeing to a swim race against his successor, he comes back from the military prematurely, having been injured in a blast. His knee will require a special splint and his ability to swim is forever inhibited. The Clearwater Hospital is also struggling financially, with a board of directors debating whether or not to sell the land to a wealthy businessman who wants to turn it into a hotel. These are straight out of a playbook of film cliches, but a confrontation scene where Veteran's Administration doctor Cameron McCarthy (Morgan Freeman) tells Kyle to take charge of his own recovery is played without trembling lips and long speeches, and Dr. Haskett doesn't storm out of any board meetings. The film naturally drifts back to Winter after brief detours into these other stories, returning to Sawyer's love of the dolphin and his hope that Dr. McCarthy can develop a prosthetic tail for her that will save her life.

If there's anything wrong with Dolphin Tale, it's that its pacing drags. The film puts Sawyer in summer school only to need to find a way to get him back out of it. The idea is that Sawyer's interest in Clearwater is him discovering his passion, but the viewer doesn't need to know he's bored with his classes to get that he loves caring for Winter. There's also a terrible scene involving a remote control helicopter that serves absolutely no purpose, and features more of the movie's awful CG animation. A scene where Dr. Haskett recounts a legend about dolphins is nice but narratively unnecessary, and the entire picture just feels as if it could use a bit of tightening up here and there (Martin's love of fade outs is very strong). Still, all things considered, "overlong" is a pretty mild criticism for a film like Dolphin Tale, a surprisingly buoyant family picture that keeps the focus on its very real star attraction.

The Blu-ray
Dolphin Tale 3D is a 3-disc combo pack, housed in a single-width Blu-ray case with a flap tray. The 3D and 2D Blu-ray discs go on the flap tray, while the DVD copy sits in a tray on the back cover. The front artwork features an image of the cast (good old floating heads) over an image of Sawyer and Winter in the water together. Note: The original 2011 release came with a digital copy (and probably a slipcover promoting that fact), but the version I received for review did not include one.

The 3D Video and Audio
Presented in 2.39:1 1080p MVC 3D, Dolphin Tale makes the jump to home video with ease. Early instances of the 3D effect are a little underwhelming, mostly consisting of separating a character in the foreground from the background, more like a pop-up book, and there are some dumb shots, such as a scene where Ashley Judd returns home and is framed behind a lattice divider. There is also a fairly terrible opening sequence featuring CGI dolphins that makes Dolphin Tale almost seem like an animated movie, and a later sequence involving a remote control helicopter that adds nothing. However, as the film progresses, there are better uses of the 3D effect, with the marine hospital providing plenty of staircases and observation windows where the depth actually has some impetus inside the image. Colors skew a little orangey, and contrast seems a touch heavy to emphasize the dimensionality of the image, but no crush or aliasing invaded the picture, and I noticed no crosstalk during the picture. All in all, a satisfying 3D experience.

Sound is a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack which captures plenty of good directional effects when Sawyer is near the dolphin, which often whistles and murmurs even when it's off camera, which caused me to look over my shoulder for the source a few times. Underwater sequences provide some nice atmospheric opportunities, and the aforementioned action sequences are lively, even if they're dumb. Still, most of Dolphin Tale is just standard family drama, and as such there isn't much going on to challenge anyone's sound system. Lossy DD 5.1 tracks in Quebec French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and English captions for the deaf and hard of hearing, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles are included on both versions of the film. The 3D version also includes a bonus Parisian French DD 5.1 track.

The Extras
A selection of short video supplements are included on the 2D disc inside the combo pack. For whatever reason, the first is "The Hutash Rainbow Bridge" (2:26), or "Hutash's Rainbow Bridge" if you go by the extra itself, is just a fairly cheesy and slightly cheap CG animated short illustrating Connick's speech from the movie. One of the later extras on the disc is also an animated short, Ormie and the Cookie Jar (3:59), a silly cartoon about a pig and an out-of-reach treat, which is much better, if not anything special in and of itself. I guess it was popular, though, as the character has recently been optioned for a feature-length film.

Actual making-of featurettes start with "At Home With Winter" (13:22), which focuses on the fact that Winter plays herself in the film, and shooting at the actual Clearwater Marine Aquarium, including renovations done for the film. It's not a challenge that many films face, and so this is more interesting than the average EPK because it's actually showing the challenges of something unique. The cast also talks briefly about their characters and the true story, and Charles Martin Smith talks about his ideas in making the film. Conversely, "Dolphin Tale: Spotlight on a Scene" (7:17) focuses on the worst scene in the movie, the terrible CG opening sequence. Part of the premise of the featurette is explaining what about the sequence was filmed for real and what's fake, which should be painfully apparent just from watching the sequence.

Finally, a couple bits of additional footage are included. One additional scene, "Winter Meets Panama" (2:21) is a surprisingly decent scene of Winter meeting another dolphin. A silly gag reel (2:49) completes the extras. All of the video extras are presented in HD.

Conclusion
I was not expecting to enjoy Dolphin Tale as much as I did, but it's a warm and simple picture, one that contains some questionable plot devices but handles them as well as possible, resulting in a slightly unwieldy but ultimately satisfying film. This 3D combo pack features a strong enhanced feature presentation, and a decent selection of supplementary features. Recommended.