A young boy and an orca become best of friends in the 1993 family film Free Willy. The rebellious boy, Jesse, is placed with a new foster family and, through a kind of juvenile probation, meets Willy at an adventure park in the Pacific Northwest. Willy has been stolen from his family in the ocean at the behest of a greedy park owner, and Jesse, after befriending him, sets about trying to help him regain his freedom. Heartwarming as all get out, Free Willy went on to spawn multiple sequels, but none were able to meet the crowd-pleasing heights of the original.
“Free Willy works its way around the physical reality of its animal lead, and somehow becomes one of the summer’s best family pictures.” – Roger Ebert
“Free Willy is an exhilarating drama of boy and nature that unabashedly pulls at the heart strings. Thankfully, its creators know just what to do emotionally and technically to pull off this old-fashioned sentimental yarn. It is a highly enjoyable whirlwind of images and feelings with enormous family appeal” – Leonard Klady, Variety
