Dolphin Island
ENTERTAINMENT SQUADNow, more than ever, the time is ripe for a simple, wholesome tale that delivers those gooey good feelings people are in short supply of these days. Although Dolphin Island is hamstrung by predictable plotting and sometimes wooden acting, its heart is in the right place, and the joy found by simply watching the titular mammals is enough to get by on.
Written by Shaked Berenson, Rolfe Kanefsky, and Mike Disa who also directed, the movie was shot in between two crises: the battering of the Bahamas by Hurricane Dorian and the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. Created as a means to help out the Bahaman economy (a portion of the profits go to local cast and crew), there’s no denying the heartfelt nature of Dolphin Island. Its sentimentalism is genuine and the values the film imparts could not be more well-timed.
The characters, mostly the protagonist Annabel (Tyler Jade Nixon), don’t feel like real people. Annabel is almost a caricature of a person, her bright-eyed optimism and cheery smile toeing the line of believability. The opposite goes for the beard-twirling villain, a barrister played by Bob Bledsoe who wants to take Annabel out of the care of her loving adoptive grandfather (Peter Woodward) and send her to live with her rich grandparents from New York. His character goes through a Disney-esque turn to good at the end that really stretches the imagination. Through no lack of trying on the part of the script, most of the characters are one-note. A notable exception is Woodward’s warm and lovable fisherman. He shares one scene with Dionne Lea’s Desaray that might be the closest the film gets to earned emotions.
Despite the lackluster script, there are bright spots to be found within Disa’s film. The score composed by Chase Horseman is just original enough to not be cloying, and it certainly heightens several key scenes. The cinematography by Shaun Hart does an excellent job of showing off the beauty of the titular island. But if there’s one particular element that steals the show, it has to be the dolphin, Mitzy. Surely a better actor than some of the main cast, Mitzy’s flips and tricks and head movements are so spot-on it’s hard to imagine how the crew could have gotten the dolphin to do some of them. Even though the film’s plot is simple, the most believable part of it might be that this dolphin is smarter than it looks. When Mitzy is needed at the end of the film to do something one would not expect a dolphin could do, there wasn’t a moment of hesitation. Instantaneously, the audience has full faith in Mitzy.
If only the rest of the film could have been half as magical as the dolphin, this might have been the movie the world needed right now. Unfortunately, it only ends up being a passable, if pleasant enough, gorgeous trip to the Bahamas (virtually, of course).
