Yeah it seems most people give up trying, get a cheap old Wii and mod it to play this. I'm not sure if there are any other GC or Wii titles that are particularly troublesome.
Dolphin plays a lot of things great but yes these are well known as very "trouble games"
There are I3's and then there are I3's. Still capable of running a ton of games pretty well unless he tries to go crazy with 8xnative or something