The Day of the Dolphin

The problem is not with the subject, nor even with its presumably escapist spirit. The problem is that Mike Nichols and Buck Henry fail to bring it off successfully. [27 Dec 1973, p.51]

Mike Nichols' film of The Day of the Dolphin is a rare and regrettably uneven combination of ideas and action. George C. Scott stars as a marine scientist whose work with dolphins faces corruption by his own sponsors. The story climax strains belief, but Nichols is one of a handful of directors who can get away with occasional improbability.

The Day of the Dolphin is not a movie with much personality of its own.

Mike Nichols’ The Day of the Dolphin trips on its own stylishness and tries so hard not to be a conventional science-fiction thriller that it fails, alas, to be anything.

What is left, besides a lot of pretty dolphin footage, is some bad intercollegiate-revue satire, a shadow of Sea Hunt, and a calculated sentimentality that evokes memories of Lassie Come Home.

It's preposterously ill-conceived.

The plot soon disintegrates into dumbness, despite Scott's believable portrayal of an aquatic Dr. Dolittle. The screenplay chooses some poor times to relieve tension, and the jokes fall flat.