Blue Miracle Movie Review

Blue Miracle deserves some credit for bringing to light a side of Cabo San Lucas that Sammy Hagar doesn’t mention in his songs (that’s not a knock on the Red Rocker, mind you). What I do find hard to believe is that all the children in the orphanage run by Omar (Jimmy González) speak almost perfect English. I could assume that the English dialogue is meant to stand in for the characters speaking Spanish among themselves, but then the script would have to be consistent — and that’s not the case when the characters keep interjecting a Spanish word here, another there, and so on in the midst of mostly Anglo-Saxon speech. How are we to interpret this linguistic flip-flopping? Anyway, Omar owes the bank a shitload of money, and to make matters worse, a violent storm ravages the orphanage — and, to boot, blows the movie several decades back in time; the film ends up landing on top of the ancient “Save the Orphanage” plot line. Ornery, child-phobic boat captain Wade (Dennis Quaid) is, for reasons not worth recounting, forced to team up with the orphans for the cash prize in a fishing competition (Wade has a hemingwayesque code of honor; he’d rather lose a client than send him home with a marlin the client didn’t catch. I wish the movie had been solely about him). Will Omar and Wade put their differences aside? Will the children learn the value of teamwork? Will these noobies, who prior to the tournament (with the exception of Wade of course), “had never fished,” win the competition against all odds? Will Wade’s heart grow three sizes? Will he donate his share of the prize to save the orphanage? Does a marlin shit in the ocean?