The Last Lions (***1/4)

Most animal films have a disclaimer at the end stating that no animals were harmed in the making of the film. Not so here. National Geographic Society veterans Dereck and Beverly Joubert merely state that it wasn’t their fault. Following a lioness and her three cubs in Botswana for several months, the Jouberts capture close-up views of the hunt. At the start of the documentary, they’ve become victims of a battle for territory and exiled themselves onto an island with no other lions. Although, an adult lioness may be the queen of the jungle, her cubs are another matter. Not much larger than housecats, they’re easy prey for crocodiles and other animals. The challenge will be going on the hunt while protecting them. Prey arrives in the form of buffalo, but their larger numbers make it difficult to attack.

The narration (read by Jeremy Irons) does its best to shape this into a story of family, but no amount of poetic phrasing (“a life lived by tooth and claw” can turn this into March of the Penguins, although even that depicted cruelty. Phrases like “the little hunter’s heart did skip a small beat” and “triumph…feels a little hollow” do come close to anthropomorphism but are reasonable, if metaphorical, inferences from the evidence. The Jouberts, having followed lions and other animals in Africa for 20 years, ought to know. The narration mentions human encroachment and begins and ends by informing the audience that the number of lions has decreased from an estimated 450,000 to 20,000 in a few decades. However, the story is focused. Excepting the Jouberts themselves during the closing credits, no humans are seen, and, for much of the time, only the one lioness and her cubs. The information content here is medium, and the narrative pretty good, but the photography is stunning.

IMDB link

viewed 3/17/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 3/18 and 3/20/11

The Wild (**1/4)

New York Zoo animals go on a rescue mission to the jungle. The plot may confuse children, and the characters are nothing special, but Disney’s animation shines.

I guess the easy way to dismiss this animated-animal clunker would be to say I liked it (slightly) better when it was called Madagascar. Both movies feature a group of animals who travel from a zoo to the jungle. In each case, it’s the New York Zoo. Ho hum. But the movies are different. The zoo and the characters in this one are a lot more fanciful. The NY Zoo here features several phyla engaged in the largest curling match south of Medicine Hat. The younger kids may already be lost at this point. I will say that Disney’s animation was spectacular. I would have been scared of the lion, Samson, except he’s cowardly. Another thing different about this is that there’s a male squirrel trying to put the moves on the female giraffe. There were no intimations of anatomically improbable bestiality in Madagascar. This is, sadly, the best running gag in the movie. The most amusing character was the British-accented koala, who, like a lisp-less version of Ice Age’s Sid, fails to earn the respect he craves. The main story is about how Samson (Kiefer Sutherland), a single dad, has some communication gaps with his young son, who runs away, and also runs up against some uppity wildebeests. Ho hum. This movie made me think, although mostly as an alternative to listening to the dialogue. I was thinking the same thing as after I saw the credits for Hoodwinked, which is that Janeane Garafolo, who voiced the giraffe, sounds just like Anne Hathaway. Also, why is the male-female ratio in all of these animated animal films about four to one (even higher here)? Are all of the females home baking? So many places to let the mind wander when watching this.

IMDb link

posted 8/24/13