Common Sense Note
Parents should know that this animal movie does feature a syrupy romance, but it is without any objectionable material.
Families who watch this movie might discuss "animal movies." How does this movie compare to other animal-centered films that you've seen? Do these movies have a formula? Is this type of film meant to make you feel a certain way? How did this particular movie make you feel?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Michael Scheinfeld
A dolphin and a dog become friends as their respective owners fall in love in ZEUS AND ROXANNE, a predictable and highly unoriginal animal movie that's partially redeemed by its cuddly critters and picturesque Bahamas scenery. Preteens who are able to get past the syrupy romance will get the most out of this movie.
While spending the summer at a rented beach house, widower Terry Barnett (Steve Guttenberg) and his young son, Jordan, befriend their marine biologist neighbor, Mary Beth Dunhill (Kathleen Quinlan). Terry's dog, Zeus, strikes up an immediate kinship with Roxanne, a formerly captive dolphin that Mary Beth is trying to get to adjust to life in the open sea.
While Jordan and Mary Beth's daughters plot to get their parents together, Mary Beth applies for a grant on interspecies communication, utilizing Zeus for her research. But her unscrupulous competitor, Dr. Carver, does everything he can to sabotage her work and win the grant for himself. Carver captures Zeus and Roxanne, but Zeus turns the tables and traps Carver in a net while he and Roxanne escape.Zeus and Roxanne is pleasantly innocuous when it sticks to such shameless, but effective, family-movie basics as single parents falling in love, precocious kids, and adorable animals. It offers attractive underwater photography and pretty sunsets, a broadly comic villain with a South African accent, and cute scenes of the frisky dog "talking" to the shy dolphin. Unfortunately, it becomes virtually unwatchable when the plot's focus shifts from communicating animals to Terry and Mary Beth's sappy romance.
After the adult's first date, the animals fade into the background as the kids conspire to get their parents together. It's hard to imagine at whom the filmmakers thought they were aiming; at this point, kids will become bored, while their parents squirm as they're subjected to a bare-chested Steve Guttenberg (playing an unconventional musician working on a rock opera, hilariously outfitted with an earring and a motorcycle).
The children are the usual wisecracking teen stereotypes, resulting in lots of high-fives, thumbs-ups, and dialogue such as, "No way."
"Way!" When Terry finds a picture of his late wife while moving into Mary Beth's house, the movie becomes hopelessly maudlin, culminating with one of the most mushy endings in memory: Terry and Mary Beth's wedding is interrupted by news of her grant, followed by Zeus "telling" Roxanne it's time for her to rejoin her dolphin friends, which she does after catching the wedding bouquet!
Australian director George Miller is an old hand at these animal and nature movies, but this one is strictly a dull, by-the-numbers effort. Free Willy is a more kid-friendly animal tale, without the distracting romance.
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