Of this year's corny family heartwarmers based on true aquatic stories of coping with the loss of appendages, director Charles Martin Smith's boy-and-his-dolphin melodrama at least earns your empathy—unlike the disingenuous Christploitation of Soul Surfer. Off the Florida coast, skittish grade-schooler Nelson (Nathan Gamble) strikes an immediate bond with a bottlenose named Winter (playing herself), freeing her from a crab trap that has irrevocably crippled her tail.
