Eye of the Dolphin (2007)

Simply A Masterpiece

best movie i've ever seen.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Usually I love films with animals very much, but "Eye of the Dolphin" disappointed me. The acting of the cast is mediocre and not interesting. Somehow I just don't like the guy who plays the father. His personality did not convince that he was a scientist who is passionate about dolphins. The story moves so slow and the whole thing was predictable. The ending is not even believable. The dolphins are cute but somehow it's just nothing different from the way we saw them at the show. The best thing about this movie is the scenery of the beach and its wild life. It makes me want to go visit Bahamas one day.In conclusion, this is not like a horrible movie or anything. It's just boring and predictable. I watched through the whole thing. I just don't want to watch it again.

Our entire family enjoyed this wonderful family film. We recently noticed that it won a "Parenting Award" from the NAPPA and for good reason IMO. The combination of Animals interacting with humans in family films has always been appealing to audiences and Carly Schroeder has both charisma and a genuiness about her that comes across beautifully on the big screen. But there is much more to this values based film, one that all parents with "tweens" and/or teens should love. Eye of the Dolphin is a true family drama about a parent and a child discovering each other and about communication. It also reminds me of some of the old family entertainment that we all watched as kids, Flipper and Swiss Family Robinson come to mind. The film has plenty of under water and dolphin scenes. A "must see" family film.

I had absolutely no interest in seeing the film and only did so after I was able to get some promotional tickets. Though the story sells like a coming of age tale, it's much better than that. The beginning is a bit cliché but once the story begins to take hold it becomes a unique and enjoyable film experience. Carly Schroeder is a fun actress to watch. It will be interesting to watch her acting career develop in the next few years. George Harris and Christine Adams are wonderful and tend to steal the scenes without trying. Jane Lynch is always a welcome addition and adds some class to the whole film. The story, though obviously geared towards younger girls does not discriminate against age or sex; it's a fun film for anyone.

(THE SPOILER DOESN'T COME UNTIL THE END, AND IT'S WELL MARKED)Matthew, you're to be commended for your concern for marine mammal welfare but your comments miss the mark and are unfair to the movie.You say: "The film portrays dolphins in the wild as friendly and sociable with humans, in fact wild dolphins prefer to keep clear of human contact if possible and can pose a threat."You seem to be saying, among other things, that you view it as implausible that a wild dolphin would behave in a friendly manner towards a human, yet there is much evidence dating back centuries showing that occasionally dolphins do in fact seek out humans in the manner depicted in the movie. There is a scientific term for a dolphin who enters bays and inlets and seeks out human interaction -- "lone sociable dolphin". You can read an interesting summary of these cases at http://www.mmc.gov/reports/ contract/pdf/samuelsreport.pdf -- there are over thirty documented cases. As for a "lone sociable dolphin" possibly posing a threat -- Hawk is clearly worried about that when he forbids Alyssa from seeing the dolphin again. He also makes the point that this behavior is an aberration, not normal, and that a dolphin doing this is "psychologically unstable". He says "it's bad for the dolphins, Alyssa", and eventually "somebody gets hurt" -- which is the other point, and that is that lone sociable dolphins frequently become a local tourist attraction (it recently happened in Ireland, by the way), and sometimes things get out of hand to the detriment of the dolphin. The film depicts another aspect of interaction between humans and wild dolphins when it shows the tour boat captain bringing in tourists, then feeding the dolphins and letting his tourists swim with them. This type of "food provisioning habituation" of dolphins by tour operators is another thing the film, through Hawk, seems to be against. It certainly doesn't seem to be promoting it.(BEWARE POSSIBLE SPOILER FOLLOWS)There's one other point to consider, and this concerns the film's position on dolphin captivity. At the end of the movie the film suggests that instead of captivity, it might be possible for dolphins to be hosted by humans, and interact with them, but not be captive. What is depicted in the film is very close to the "Third Phase Alternative" to dolphin captivity developed by Ken Levasseur. In Levasseur's program, captive dolphins are trained and, over time, allowed to return to the wild and interact with humans on their terms, not the humans. This is depicted in the movie as a solution, and thus the film seems to be taking an enlightened position on captivity issues. You might want to read Levasseur's "Third Phase" paper. It can be viewed online at http://whales7.tripod.com/policies/levasseur/ levass3a.html.