**Thumbs Up:**

Engelbert the penguin keeps viewers somewhat sane in the midst of all the other crap this movie is made of.
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**Thumbs Down:**

The B-film budget this straight-to-video reboot of the _Free Willy_ franchise is made with is blatantly obvious - everything looks and feels cheap. The only saving grace is the beautiful South African setting.
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The orcas have hit a new low; fake CGI whales and even more fake robotic ones.
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**Bindi Irwin** is a terribly annoying actress, most of the time overperforming everything she does. The rest of the time she's just bland.
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**Beau Bridges** is clearly trying to have a good tile, but never feels like the responsible and serious adult he is supposed to be. His silliness only works on the younger viewers, for others, it is just too much.
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Endless pointless montages and unnecessarily detailed science talk.
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The filmmakers are trying to copy the plot for the original _Free Willy_ film for the sake of nostalgia, only changing the setting and the protagonist. They end up butchering the plot with the nonsensical dialogue and laughably bad story.
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The jokes aren't funny at all.
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The villains are clichéd, stupid and nowhere near as threatening as in the earlier films.
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The fake whales make it imbossible for Willy and Kirra to form a bond - a pivotal element of any Willy movie.
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After a pointless and predictable build-up, the film moves onto a hugely dissatisfying finale.
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I can't believe they substituted the iconic harmonica with that abominable horn thingy.
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For the sake of everyone's sanity and Willy's soul, let's just pretend that this embarrassment doesn't exist.
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**Final rating: :thumbsdown_tone2::thumbsdown_tone2::thumbsdown_tone2::thumbsdown_tone2: = 2/10**

**Free Willy rebooted!**

I did not know there was a fourth 'Free Willy'. This is not exactly a follow-up. There's no connection between previous films and this, except the Orca named as Willy. They call it a reboot, but instead they should have turned it into a prequel. Because this storyline was very much like that kind. I'm not a big fan of this franchise, so I was not expecting anything big. One of the reason I watched it for our Steve Irwin's beloved daughter. This is her acting debute and she was quite good, though not the ideal one.

She as Kirra lives alone with her single father and after he met with an accident, she was sent to her grandfather's in South Africa. The old man who runs a small seaside amusement park, Kirra does not find hard to get adjusted, not without initial dislike for him. But it was when she finds a baby Orca that trapped in the park's small lagoon. Since she begins to fight for its freedom, but has to go through many obstacles and in the end how the story end was told with a tiny twist.

Not a bad film. Small cost film, a neat production. Nice performances too. Simple and predictable story, but would work well for little kids. Beautiful places, well, most of the film was shot in a single location, though it looked very nice. And the killer whale calf was a toy in most of the closer shots, as well in a few stunt sequences. Not a film for deliberately jump in to watch, but if you decide to watch, just keep away your grownup egos to enjoy it as a kid. Particularly for its message, to save the wild animals from human's captivity.

_6/10_