THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 18, 1996 TAG: 9605180556
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
THERE'S NOTHING wrong with ``Flipper'' that couldn't be cured by more porpoise.
It's a perfectly acceptable, if highly predictable, hymn to a boy and his mammal.
While it has some nice underwater photography and an exciting climax, ``Flipper'' fails to generate the kind of emotion that made ``Free Willy'' such a big hit.
Elijah Wood plays an initially surly, belligerent city boy who's been made bitter by his parents' divorce until he's shipped off to his uncle's beach hideaway and finds a dolphin friend. Wood is film's reigning boy actor now that that Macauley Culkin has been forced to retire and is back home alone.
He seemed quite natural in ``The War'' and ``The Good Son'' but his packagers seemed to be overly worried here about his advancing age. He's apparently been instructed to do such a macho act that he sometimes seems to be trying a moppet version of a John Wayne imitator. He's still quite an appealing actor who becomes inherently likable once Flipper shows him about life.
His uncle Porter is a beach bum who used to be a hippie and a Beach Boys fan but now is sometimes a fisherman. Paul Hogan brings an eccentric and raffish air to the role that adults, especially any ``Crocodile Dundee'' fans still around, will like. Hogan seems anxious to let us know, at all times, that he's really slumming in this picture and would rather be somewhere else.
Elijah, who is called Sandy, just as the lead character was in the mid-1960s movies and TV series, meets Flipper at sea when a plug-ugly villain is trying to kill our hero dolphin and his mother. The faithful Flipper follows the boy back to the pier and eventually helps him expose villains who are dumping toxic waste in the fishing waters.
Any screenwriter for a ``Flipper'' movie is in real trouble. He has to keep the dolphin logically near the shoreline and the boy involved, even though the entire film can't take place in the water. Mercifully, Alan Shapiro, the writer and director, has kept to a minimum those scenes in which the boy has to talk, solo, to the dolphin.
The three real-life dolphins who play Flipper are fine, leaping creatures who are a joy to see - and you can hardly spot the scenes in which animatronic ``things'' replace them.
The film tries hard to be hip and to update the original theme. It has Elijah yearning to go to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Orlando and it has mild sermons about ecology - particularly condemning the dumping of toxic waste.
The target kiddie audience is likely to be stirred by the grand finale, a fight between Flipper and a hammerhead shark called Scar. (Interestingly, Scar as well as Flipper are offered as toys on the market to coincide with the movie's release.)
There are, though, too many boring scenes with adults talking a lot - and Flipper himself takes too long to make his entrance.
What we need is more of Flipper and more underwater photography. Some kids will just want to go back and free Willy again. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Flipper''
Cast: Paul Hogan, Elijah Wood, Isaac Hayes
Director: Alan Shapiro
MPAA rating: PG (some language)
Mal's rating: Two 1/2 stars
Locations: Cinemark, Greenbrier 13, Chesapeake; Janaf, Main
Gate, Norfolk; Columbus, Kemps River Crossing, Lynnhaven Mall,
Surf-n-Sand, Virginia Beach.
by CNB