Flipper

Bomb Rating: 

What better way to spend your afternoon than watching a movie with five hundred crying, distracted kiddies between the ages of three months and ten years old?

I drove to the preview of this film with all the hopeful anticipation of someone about to lick the inside of a cat's litter box. What better way to spend your afternoon than watching a movie with five hundred crying, distracted kiddies between the ages of three months and ten years old? The only manner in which I was truly interested in seeing Flipper was kabobbed.

In a nutshell, "Flipper" is "Free Willy" with a smaller sea-going mammal. A hunter kills Flipper's mate. Sandy (Elijah Wood) is sent off to some remote island to spend the summer with his weird uncle (Paul Hogan). Miraculously an instant orphan-to-orphan connection creates an unbreakable bond between Sandy and his wet pal. Boy, those Hollywood writers really come up with the most original stories, don't they?

Certainly, when we learn that some fisherman is dumping toxic waste into the ocean, it's no surprise. However, it's shocking when young Sandy uses Flipper to con the local kids. Hundreds of them come to the dock to see Flipper take their quarters and turn them into pennies. Our dolphin hero, it turns out, has both a can of pennies on the bottom of the ocean floor and a mastery of our monetary system.

This showcase of exploitation will no doubt give little kids some great ideas. Imagine: "Feed my dog weird stuff for fifty cents"; "Spank my monkey for a dollar"; "Let's make Gerbsicles for two bucks!"

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