African Cats

Year: 2011

Grade: C+

Country: USA

Director: Fothergill/Scholey

Review

as a nature film, with the sound off, this works just fine. i used to watch the old national geographic stuff on tv all the time and this one has better camerawork than those. however, where those succeeded and this one failed is in their ability to tell a truthful story about the circle of life. this one makes it much more of a narrative in human terms and doesn’t have the same objectivity that those had. watching those early nature films was a good experience. i would watch one following cheetahs one week and another following zebras the next. of course each time you root for the protagonists, but it eventually makes you realize that there are two sides to every story. when you’re happy that the cheetah is finally able to feed her family you then have to remember that the zebra just lost a member of their family. such is life, but it’s a perspective many adults still don’t grasp.

at any rate, the narration is really where this film suffers. jackson’s delivery is adequate, but the writing is piss poor.

Watched in theater