Dolphin Tale 1 🎥 2011 Movie Info

Plot Summary

Sawyer Nelson is a lonely 11-year-old who has been falling behind academically in school since his father’s abandonment five years earlier. Sawyer spends his time playing video games and building model airplanes and helicopters in his garage. His only friend is his college-aged cousin Kyle Connellan, a champion swimmer who hopes to compete in the Olympics. Kyle leaves to spend time in the army, to help pay for Olympic training. With his only friend gone, Sawyer becomes even more isolated and Sawyer’s failing grades have required him to take summer school. One day, while riding his bike to summer school, Sawyer finds a fisherman attempting to help an injured dolphin tangled in a crab trap.

The dolphin is taken for treatment to Clearwater Marine Hospital, run by Dr. Clay Haskett. Clay’s daughter Hazel names the dolphin Winter, after two prior dolphins, Summer and Autumn, had been treated successfully and returned to the ocean. Sawyer sneaks in to see Winter, and later starts to visit each day, being harassed by a crazy pelican named Rufus. Sawyer’s mother, Lorraine, and Clay are hesitant, due to Sawyer’s inexperience with marine animals, and repeatedly skipping summer school, but they realize that the friendship seems to benefit both Winter and Sawyer.

Clay allows the visits to continue, and Lorraine withdraws Sawyer from summer school and lets him volunteer at CMA, and gives him a new wetsuit. However, Winter’s tail is wounded and must be amputated. Winter learns to swim without a tail by developing a side-to-side motion like a fish, but after an X-ray, Clay notices the unnatural motion is causing stress on her spine, which, if continued, will handicap and eventually kill her. The news comes that Kyle has been injured severely in an explosion and is returning home for treatment. Sawyer is excited to see him, but devastated when Kyle skips his own welcoming party.

Meet the Cast