Flipper (1996)

Sandy has to spend his Summer break with his uncle Porter in the Florida Keys and right away we're supposed to sympathise with him . If we had to sympathise with uncle Porter that I could understand but no we're supposed to feel sorry for Sandy . Now let's see Sandy gets a holiday on the South East American coast , the Caribbean in fact and everyone who saw this at a South Central or Hell's Kitchen cinema are supposed to shed tears for Sandy ! Why ? Is he going to get attacked by a giant squid ? Oh hold on he did get attacked by a giant squid in another movie ! As you can imagine FLIPPER plays out like all these other aquatic family movies . Boy doesn't get on with a family member , sea animal is oppressed by these nasty evil humans , boy and sea animal become the best of friends , boy finds love though happily not in the flippers of a sea creature , there's an environmental subplot etc . So in effect FLIPPER is no better or worse than any other movie of its ilk . You know how everything is going to work out before the end credits or even before the opening credits . The only thing of note is Paul Hogan who is fairly impressive in a straight role

This film suffers from being caught between two thematic ideas; on the one hand it wants to be a light comic character romp, and on the other hand it tries for a contemporary teen romance come light adventure story. And on top of that, it tries to cash in on the reputation of the various TV series' versions of 'Flipper'. And the big problem is with this movie is that nothing really works; it all seems to cancel each other out.(Spoiler Warning)Paul Hogan is still quite adept at light knockabout comedy - such as the much-promoted toasting bread with a blowtorch bit - but this is mainly smothered by Elijah Wood's mod grunge moody contemporary teenager thang - which doesn't play to comedy very well.There's a romantic angle thrown in with one of the local girls; but this is smothered by the attempt at character comedy with the showmanship entrepreneur angle, and the light adventure with the marauding shark bit.Overall the film is too dull and downbeat to be really fun, and yet too light-hearted to really work as a serious contemporary story.One bit I really liked however, was in the climactic scene when Elijah moved his eyes rapidly back and forth to show the character contemplating an emotional crunch-point. Elijah is naturally very expressive with his eyes, and he starts to show it off to good use in this movie. (PS: He's also got way hot legs as well - but that's totally beside the point!)

Flipper is a good movie that you can just sit down and watch with the little ones without having to worry about shielding their eyes at any point during it. Sure it's a bit cheesey at times and the writing is not on scale with an actor of Elijah Wood's caliber, but it is an entertaining film to watch and it's nice to see him playing a somewhat normal teenager. His character Sandy does lean towards the overly obnoxious side of things in the beginning though. So much so that you know if you were in the uncle's place, you'd take him out for a midnight ocean ride and not return with him.

well! its just finished on channel 4 about an hour ago! it was cool, better than free willy i have to say! ermm what to say...kids wud deffo like this film, the only fault is that it didnt show the rhcp's concert!! was lookin forward to seeing that when it was mentioned however...:P:P dont rent it wait for it to come on the television - pretty good acting ttfn xx