Everybody loves dolphins, right? We travel thousands of miles to go swimming with them. We read stories about them protecting people from sharks. An idea like Flipper gets two long-running television series and two movies. So when we hear a story about a dolphin who a) has lost his tail and b) has lost the will to live, we are all going to cry - and movie studios love tears.

Yahoo! has posted the first trailer for Dolphin Tale, a film based on the true story of a cute aquatic mammal that loses its tail in a crab trap and an entire town rallies together to build it a prosthetic new one. Directed by Charles Martin Smith - the dude who directed Air Bud - the movie stars Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Harry Connick, Jr., Kris Kristofferson and newcomer Cozi Zuehlsdorff.

Check out the trailer below or in HD over on Yahoo!


That may be the single most exploitative trailer I've ever seen, and I say that having seen the trailer for The Blind Side (which this trailer oh-so-casually mentions). There isn't a single frame in this preview that isn't meant to try and get the audience's eyes to well up with tears, and you get the sense that the entire movie is going to be like that. You can sum up this entire movie with one exchange seen in the trailer:

Nay-saying Mean Old Lady: "Every aquarium in the country says it's hopeless."
Brave, tirelessly working, Harry Connick, Jr: "Well they haven't met Winter yet!"

Yer changin' that dolphin's life! No, he's changing mine. And scene.