I was a child in Port Orchard when the captive orca was penned in Rich Cove. As a depiction of an orca in captivity the story is fine. There are some pretty significant fictions depicted in the movie however.One is that the orca was intensively studied while penned there; he was actually being held captive while the captor attempted to sell him.Also, there was no community enmity towards the creature. The bullies in our town were far too busy beating some of us humans up to bother with the orca.We kids loved seeing him and rode our bicycles or stopped on family outings to admire him. Port Orchard is not a fishing town, and even then this region admired and loved the orcas as one of our greatest regional icons.Set aside reality and enjoy the film if you like. But come up to Puget Sound and see them in the wild, where they belong.

I first watched Namu when I was about 12 - the lesson it teaches has stuck with me all my life ... don't destroy nature just because you don't understand it or because you can. Namu is the "first" killer whale move, but it's also one of the first movies to take a naturalist point of view, that all creatures behave by the laws of nature … except man. Namu is a great film for kids to help them go beyond assumptions and try to see life from multiple points of view. Robert Lansing played the character of the marine biologist just right – intelligent, slow, deliberate, and even when angry he held back, not lowering himself to the level of characters that were blinded by prejudices – the character is sometimes reminiscent of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.

This beautifully remarkable movie was produced in 1966 and provides any family member a chance to enjoy the interaction between benevolent humans and a creature considered a threat. It pits an ignorant, small town against an oceanographer (Robert Lansing) and a shop keeper (Lee Meriweather) in working to educate the local township that Namu is not a threat, but a lonely animal needing attention. The scene in which Lansing and Meriweather engage in play with Namu inside the lagoon is priceless and the background music is equally so. Moreover, when Namu miraculously rescues the very man (John Anderson) who tried to kill him, makes this movie unbelievably precious. Mandatory viewing for everyone.

Not a great film, but entertaining enough for small children that love films about animals in the Walt Disney tradition. Unfortunately, this film is probably not aging very well because the message, "killer whales are nice, humans are bad", has been shown a lot, for example, see the "Free Willie" movies.