You can have of the big name stars in a film that you like.

But when your co-stars are dolphins, not to mention an acting pelican and an impossibly cute sea turtle, you are always going to be playing second fiddle.

Knowing that this film’s young, child audience won’t know who he is, Morgan Freeman sports one of the biggest smiles of his career as prosthetics expert Dr Cameron McCarthy.

And Harry Connick Jr, Ashley Judd and Kris Kristofferson don’t have to try too hard to flesh out their own characters ready to stay afloat amid an ocean’s worth of sugary sentiment.

The original 2011 movie told the amazing true story of Winter, a bottlenose dolphin which had lost her tail.

At Clearwater Marine Hospital, the kind of silicon technology which now helps humans to overcome the loss of limbs was used to enable Winter to swim again – and become a major real life tourist attraction.

The death of Winter’s older companion Panama then launches a race against time.

A visiting inspector (played by returning director Charles Martin Smith) tells Dr Clay Haskett (Connick Jr) that he has 30 days to ‘correct the problem’.

Otherwise Clearwater will have to lose Winter, too – she can’t be kept alone.

Meanwhile, teenager Sawyer Nelson, who originally helped to rescue Winter, is working alongside his grown-up cousin Kyle (Austin Stowell) and trainer Phoebe (Austin Highsmith) – and has eyes for Clay’s daughter Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff).

Forget the potential romance, though. This is never anything other than a family-friendly film about how cute dolphins are and what humans can do to help them.

If you’ve seen a documentary like Blackfish (2013) you might think dolphins never belong in captivity.

Even so, the end credits, when humans who have lost limbs meet the mammals, are indisputably touching.