SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

amosduncan_2000 And given the quality of this movie, no, I don't feel guilty about that joke. Apparently Roman Polanski had been working on this project years before, if only the studios had just let it die. It's terrible and tough to sit through, but interesting as a major car wreck. Mike Nichols seemed to be attempting a more simple and direct approach than in his flashy, counter culture hits- but the film is flat, the timing is off on just about everything. The music is terrible. It's just a wildly misguided project. Mike Nichols would have hits, but his days as an interesting director (and counter culture hero) were over. Scott would never give a great performance (as in "The Hospital") again and basically returned to TV.

jzappa Marine biology scientist Dr. Jake Terrell, his wife Maggie and a crew of ecologists for the last few years have been financed by an organization to study confined dolphins on a distant Florida island. They've conditioned a male and a female dolphin to say "fa," "ma," "pa" and other basic vocabulary, and to comprehend English sufficiently enough to have simple dialogue. But Alpha can't be trained to think in English. He can merely mimic, until Jake teaches him a lesson about loss. He introduces a female dolphin, Beta, watches Alpha fall for her, then splits them up until Alpha can demand her, in English. The wholesale sequence showing Alpha swimming frantically around, thrashing his tail on the enclosure that divides them, is heartrending.Jake is like the classic father of the baby-boom bracket, unwavering in teaching valuable lessons even when he feels his child's anguish, in this case a dolphin who loves him like a father. When Alpha at last begs for Beta by name, it's an intensely gratifying moment, exemplifying the identity-related idea of language as a conciliation intuited out of loss. And, much to our grief, Alpha is now disposed to all kinds of anthropomorphic cognizant suffering.And naturally, trouble lies ahead in the form of a thriller plot true to the pinnacle era of conspiracies and rogue government. Initially, a young Paul Sorvino's slippery pollster blackmails his way onto Dr. Terrell's island, and before long, a sinister regime faction is revealed to intend to use the newfound capacity for communication in these dolphins to their advantage by abducting them for function in a presidential assassination, of all things.In training Alpha and Beta to verbalize, Jake destines them for humanity, initiating them into ceaseless yearning and unlocking the floodgates to advantage being taken of them. In due course, with the purpose of thwarting Alpha and Beta more exploitation, Jake must make a decision that is inconceivable to the living, beating heart. Pure as they are, dolphins comprehend mere absolutes. How can you make a dolphin understand not only that humans can be both good and bad, tell lies and kill their own, but that rejection, abandonment can still mean undying love, ultimate sacrifice? "Men are bad," he tells them, hardly suppressing his utterly irreparable heartbreak, and ours. "All men bad."

inspectors71 I can't watch Mike Nichols' The Day of the Dolphin without wanting a tuna sandwich, it's that bad. Nichols, Buck Henry, and George ("Ball IS bad!") C. Scott must have been one Hell of a bender--or a group ego trip--to think they could pull off a political thriller that's waterlogged from the start.Almost all of the reviews for this idiotic nonsense are saturated with gushy love for dolphins (one even talks about 9/11, for God's sake!) so there's no talking sense to them. The Day of the Dolphin is going to be a hit with folks who still talk to their plants and think Finding Nemo was a documentary.Lord love a duck.

nld_coder I think I was six when I first saw it. I might have been five. It's always been my favorite movie.All I can remember, and I don't know how many times I've seen it since, is that I cry when I do. I wouldn't have known who George C. Scott was, then, but he certainly adds to the drama.This is a classic. This is about the United States, about the people of the world. This movie is a classic - eternal.I don't know that I understood, then, what was truly going on - that scientific discovery, technology - as precious and valuable as it is, was going to be corrupted to carry out an assassination plot.It's almost eerily reminiscent of 9/11. But we didn't stop 9/11.Maybe what needs to change is the way we see the world, whether we're 6, or 86. This is a movie for all to see, especially children. This is a movie that will bring us together, and instruct us about the dangers of not only technology, but also the sometimes destructiveness of human nature.