Dolphin Tale 2 and No Good Deed, the weekend’s two big movie newcomers, don’t have a lot in common. The former is, of course, a cute, kid-centric story about dolphins and kids, about growing up and letting go. No Good Deed is about why you should never, ever let a stranger use your phone.
But in a way, they’re both an examination of one basic theme: trust.
In Dolphin Tale 2, Clearwater Marine Aquarium faces a crisis: Winter—the bottlenose dolphin with a manmade tail—has lost her longtime tank companion, Panama. Winter sinks into a serious funk over Panama’s death: Dolphins are social creatures, and no matter how many humans try to cheer her up, sometimes only a dolphin will do. Unless Dr. Clay Haskett finds a friend for Winter, Clearwater’s prime attraction will have to be shipped elsewhere.
And here’s the thing: It’s not like the aquarium can just grab one. Clearwater is more of a oceanic hospital than a theme park: Animals come in for treatment and rehabilitation. And if it’s at all possible, they’re then released back into the wild. The only critters that stick around are those like Winter: Those that’d never survive on their own.
So throughout the movie, Clay and the other folks at Clearwater have to simply trust that, as Clay himself says, a door will open. They’re hoping that things’ll work out for the best. They’re placing their faith in providence. Even though they never say so explicitly, they’re trusting that God will bring Winter a companion. And their trust is rewarded.
Not so much in No Good Deed. In the midst of a driving rainstorm, a handsome stranger named Colin shows up on the doorstep of harried mother Terri. He totaled his car just down the road, he says, and he forgot his cellphone. Could he please use hers?
Terri does what most nice, really trusting folks would probably do: He welcomes Colin into her house, lets him dry off and introduces him to her kids—letting it slip that her husband is gone for the evening. She does not consider that the guy just might be an escaped convict who has already killed at least four people—at least one, in fact, that morning. She trusts the guy. And she sees her trust betrayed.
The Bible talks a lot about where we should place our trust: And while the Bible says that God is always trustworthy, mankind isn’t quite so reliable. It exhorts us to be trustworthy … but that means rejecting our sinful natures and becoming a little more like God. In fact, Psalms 118: 8-9 says pretty explicitly that …
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in princes.
These movies have no explicit spiritual content in them. But, taken together, the flicks illustrate that verse surprisingly well.
This is not to say that every guy who asks to use your phone is untrustworthy. I’ve had occasion, actually, to knock on a stranger’s door and beg to use the telephone, actually. And despite the example set by Dolphin Tale 2, I don’t think that we can always “trust” God to answer our wishes in exactly the way we’d like to have them answered. But that’s part of the discipline of trust, too, isn’t it? To trust God even when things don’t turn out like we’d hoped?
Note: While Dolphin Tale 2 is, on the surface, about as secular as a public school, there was a number of faith-driven undercurrents in the making of the flick. To read more about those, check out my blog at Plugged In.
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