FREE WILLY
A film review by Emily L. Corse
Copyright 1993 Emily L. Corse/The Summer Pennsylvanian
**1/2 (out of ****)
Blubber away!
FREE WILLY is a formulaic tear-jerker for children, with a sad killer whale and a misunderstood boy finding spiritual kinship and beating the bad guys. Kids should love it.
However, within the confines of the kiddy formula, FREE WILLY delivers its pathos effectively and with a certain dignity. The emotional manipulation is subtler than usual, the characters are better developed, and the nature photography is beautiful. Sentimental adults with anthropomorphic sympathies (that's me!) will be able to overlook the cliches and appreciate the age-old themes of freedom and belonging.
In a nutshell, the story is about an adolescent whale stolen from his mother and a twelve-year-old boy, Jesse, abandoned years ago by his. A childless couple take the surly young human into foster care, with the wife quite obviously more enthusiastic than the husband. After Jesse gets caught in an act of vandalism, he is sentenced to do chores at the local aquatic park, where he becomes fascinated by the brooding young orca, Willy (played convincingly by real-life orca Keiko).
Willy hasn't responded to any of the humans at the park until he is seduced by Jesse's soulful harmonica noodlings. With the help of the park's animal trainer, Rae, Jesse learns to communicate with Willy and teaches him to perform for his supper. Eventually the bad guys try to kill Willy and Jesse saves him, with the help of his friends.
Oops! What a give-away! FREE WILLY does indeed have a tearfully happy ending.
So don't see this movie if you're interested in an original storyline. Obvious lessons are presented--the abandoned boy learns to trust his new parental units, the limp-finned whale learns to lick not bite, the suspicious foster father (and world's cleanest auto mechanic) learns to love his mop-topped urchin.
On the other hand, the beauty of the opening scenes alone may be worth the price of admission. Photography by Robbie Greenberg, backed with a soundtrack by Basil Poledouris, presents a long, glorious montage of wild orcas, swimming together and diving, leaping, and luxuriating in the sun-sparkled waves of the Pacific Ocean. It's as good as a "National Geographic" special on the big screen, without Marlin Perkins droning in the background.
The sudden intrusion of whale hunters into this natural paradise is almost sickening. On board the Pequod (yo! literary allusion!), the men are scary, loud, harsh, violent, and hideously ugly. The capture scene is certainly unsuitable for younger whales.
The characters in FREE WILLY aren't quirky or original of course, but neither are they offensively stereotyped. Jesse is played by Jason James Richter, who's only a little too white-bread to be interesting. He's supposed to be half-way to irreversible delinquency, but looks like he's on leave from the Mickey Mouse Club. In Richter's defense, he doesn't come across as smarmy or precocious.
Lori Petty plays Rae with a refreshing twist. After years of cinematic embarrassments like Darryl Hannah as an astrophysicist or, more recently, Laura Dern as a paleobotanist, Petty's portrayal of a marine biologist gives new hope to girls across the nation. This is an attractive blonde woman as a professional scientist who doesn't seem like a Hollywood bimbo wearing glasses!
Other supporting characters, the unconditionally-loving mom, the gruff-but-fair dad, the spiritually-advanced Native American story-teller, the runny-nosed street kid pal, the no-nonsense social worker, the butt-kissing corporate patsy, et al, are familiar but competently played.
A new Michael Jackson single "Will You Be There?" seemed like that rare treat--an infectious end title song. It's upbeat and pop (the kids in the audience were *grooving*!), but disintegrates into a sickly spoken piece that put an end to the clapping and started a mass exodus.
FREE WILLY deserves its share of the summer theatre crowd. C'mon. Take a kid along and cheer like crazy when Willy and Jesse find their families.
--Emily L. Corse corse@cit.med.upenn.edu
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