If you were a studio executive, you'd probably green-light this one too: not only do you have the success of the Free Willy franchise to back you up, you've got the provenance of the Flipper TV series to bring in the punters. Not a difficult decision, especially if you've got the chance to head down to the Bahamas to see a few scenes shot in a fabulous location.
After the killer whales took centre stage in the two Free Willys, and last year's Andre put the many talents of seals on the map, the formula for this sort of thing is fairly set. Wood is a surly city kid packed off to spend the summer in paradise with his wacky, wily, wonderful uncle Porter (Hogan), where he does the things we expect him to do: he slags off the squares, he befriends a marine mammal, he transmogrifies into a fine upstanding citizen, he sees off some fairly one-dimensional baddies messing about with toxic waste perilously close to the corner of the ocean that Flipper calls home, he cops off with a bird, and he heads back to the city a better person.
Frankly, this is dull stuff. Paul Hogan, attempting to do a Crocodile Dundee but merely looking like a crocodile, is a one-dimensional salty sea captain, while Flipper, bizarrely, lacks any real personality, and the plot, which provokes a sense of deja-vu at the best of times, is dazzlingly thin. It used to be enough to have a sympathetic kid as a main character and some cute animals shot in an endearing manner, but with today's youngsters expecting a Toy Story, or at the very least a Hunchback Of Notre Dame, you just can't get away with this sort of lack of invention any more. In other words: must try harder.