Tear Jerker / Dolphin Tale

• The movie is full of these but the little girl with the wheelchair is a huge one.
  • The fact that this girl’s mother was willing to drive eight hours from Atlanta to Clearwater just so her child, with a missing leg, could see a dolphin that she talks about constantly at home. Doubles as heartwarming in a massive way.
  • Winter swimming up to the window to see the little girl, only to turn around. At first, you think she’s going to swim away, only for her to press her tail stump against the glass where the girl’s hand rests.
  • “She’s just like me, mommy!” We dare you not to tear up at that line.

• The fact that Winter needed her tail removed at all.
  • The shot of baby Winter lying on the beach, tail bloodied and wrapped in constrictive rope and the sharp metal spikes of the crab trap, crying weakly as Sawyer leans over her.
  • The fact that earlier in the film we see the dolphins playing near a fishing boat, with one of the men looking out and clearly seeing them, before tossing the fateful trap back in the water. Knowing this movie centers on a dolphin losing her tail to a crab trap, we know it’s inevitable that it was going to happen, but it doesn’t make the blow any easier when you see Winter injured later on.

• The whole scene in which Winter has to have her tail amputated.
  • Special points go to Hazel’s absolutely devastated reaction, eyes bloodshot and tears pouring down her face as she sobs uncontrollably. She’s been around these animals long enough to know that in almost every case, this would a death sentence for a dolphin, and it shows in heartbreakingly clear detail in her expression.
  • Seeing Hazel sob like that at all. It’s a far cry from her bubbly and talkative personality that she’s shown throughout the film thus far, which makes it even worse when we see her so broken.
  • Sawyer stating the obvious that a dolphin’s tail is how they swim, followed asking in a clearly devastated tone, “how is she gonna live if she can’t swim?” Hazel simply responding “I don’t know,” voice breaking, is enough to send a pang into any viewer’s heart.

• Panama passing away in the second film.
  • The way Sawyer starts breathing heavily, clearly trying to choke back tears as he rushes to Panama’s enclosure and ask what happened.
  • This, paired with Clay’s stoic sadness as he responds that she was simply too old and couldn’t keep going any longer, and then followed by the shot of the divers going down to retrieve Panama’s lifeless body that’s lying on the bottom of the pool.
  • The fact that Panama was a key reason Winter was able to adapt so well to the marine hospital in the first place. Winter was just a baby when she was rescued, and Panama was a source of security that Winter in the wild would have had in her own mother. The hospital lost one of their beloved animals, and Winter lost what was effectively her surrogate mother.

• The entire movie series has become this since Winter's real-life passing on November 11, 2021.