Prince Of Whales

By RICHARD CORLISS

If you were a 12-year-old boy on a solo Save the Whale campaign, well, you'd slap your favorite marine mammal into a truck for a drive to the Pacific Ocean. And to keep him refreshed, you'd probably run him through an automatic car wash. And then, like an animal tamer who uses love instead of a whip, you'd get your adorable orca to leap over a high jetty so he could be reunited with his pod. You'd go that far for a friend. Where there's a whale, there's a way.

Here comes Free Willy, this month's feel-good sleeper. Preview audiences have gone wild for Willy, the story of two 12-year-olds separated from their folks. Jesse (Jason James Richter) is a troubled boy who, while cleaning up the graffiti scrawled on the walls of a seaquarium theme park in the Pacific Northwest, bonds mystically with a 7,000-lb., 22-ft.-long killer whale named Willy. Aided by his foster parents and two sympathetic adults at the park, the sweet boy makes it his mission to free the sweet beast.

The film, written by Keith A. Walker and Corey Blechman and directed by Simon Wincer (TV's Lonesome Dove), has a no-fault recipe for success. Start with Jurassic Park's fondness for huge, dangerous, pet-worthy creatures and its cunning use of special effects to make the fauna realistic. Add a dollop of Hollywood eco-mania, portraying the park owner as a predatory capitalist who would kill Willy for the insurance money. And wrap this around the summer's favorite icon: the fatherless boy who teaches everyone else -- surrogate parents, adult friends and a nearby cetacean -- how to be human. The movie hits every emotional button with a firm fist. It makes the phrase feel-good sound like a command from the industry's P.C. Patrol.

There's no denying, though, that Free Willy is a clever movie toy for the kid market. Most of the time Willy is played by Keiko, a killer whale (actually a type of dolphin) that the company found in a seaquarium in Mexico City. But frequently Keiko is spelled by a stunt double: a high-tech robot coated with 3,000 lbs. of eurythane rubber. (There is also a Turbo Willy - -- essentially the top of the whale, with mammoth hydraulic propellers on the bottom.) How real were the fake Willys? Persuasive enough so that the real Willy got the hots for them. "Whales are well-endowed animals," notes Walt Conti, the effects magician who created the seductive stand-ins. "It's pretty obvious he was attracted."

Free Willy has other attractions. Richter is an appealing, unaffected young performer; and Willy, with his black-and-white shading and fine Deco design, is a handsome brute. He's smart enough to understand complex English sentences, nodding an appropriate yes or no to Jesse's questions. And like any ingratiating adolescent, Willy knows how to make bad manners look cute. The children who giggled in Jurassic Park at the sight of a paleobotanist elbow- deep in triceratops doody will love the moment when Willy uses his blowhole to whisk away a huge wad of whale snot. Most important, he has a sweet disposition -- lets the boy stroke his tongue -- and is fiercely loyal to his human sibling. By film's end, a million tots in the audience will be tearfully whispering Jessie's climactic words: "I love you, Willy."

Who could not love Free Willy, aside from a grouchy movie critic? Perhaps the people at Sea World, the chain of popular marine parks in San Diego; Orlando, Florida; San Antonio, Texas; and Aurora, Ohio. Its curators are steamed at the film's depiction of an animal theme park as an inhumane cesspool. "The movie is not a fair portrayal of whales in captivity," argues Jim Antrim, general curator at Sea World in San Diego. "The trainer seems to be feeding the animal an inferior type of fish and often walks by the animal in an uninterested manner." Sea World execs charge that the movie is inaccurate on many levels, from the miraculously rapid affinity between Jesse and Willy to the malicious characterization of trainers, park staff and visitors. In one scene, dozens of customers bang interminably on the glass wall of Willy's tank, inciting the whale to a destructive frenzy. No security guard is in sight.

"If I had my druthers, these places wouldn't even exist," says Free Willy's executive producer, Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon, Radio Flyer). "There are those who'll argue the aquatic parks are like zoos, that they teach children and others about animals. But I'm against zoos too." Donner's wife, Lauren Shuler-Donner, who co-produced the movie, says, "We didn't set out to make a movie condemning aquatic parks. We set out to make a movie about a boy and a whale and family and friendship and freedom. But personally, I've never liked zoos, seaquariums or even birds in cages. If people want to see a whale, they can see it on television or in movies or go on a whale-watching tour."

Two of the Willy whales may soon go on tour. Animatronic Willy is set for a promotional jaunt. And real Willy -- Keiko -- will have to find less confining quarters. It is in danger of growing too large for its Mexico City tank. As co-producer Jennie Lew Tugend notes sadly, "It's a 22-ft. whale in a tank that's only 15 ft. deep."

Activists, unite against Hollywood's neglect of a new star. Save this whale!

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles