Tuesday, March 1, 2011

For the sake of not having to write the same intro a million different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull process of full film reviews and instead opts to break things down based on what I thought going in, what happened while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.  Thanks for reading!

The Breakdown - Last Lions

The Impression:

National Geographic takes a step in to the feature-film world with a picture about a mama lion, alone and trying to protect her cubs. I imagine this might be something like watching bits of Planet Earth on an enormous screen. I titter with excitement.


The Reality:

It’s a good idea for National Geographic to position itself as major player in documentary feature films. Audiences are enraptured by Planet Earth and Life and anything else involving HD cameras and animals being animals. Thus, a well-shot pic about lions and their cubs fighting water buffalo and each other, seems a stunningly well conceived way of making a solid buck. The idea of making Last Lions a "feature film" is taken too far though. Jeremy Irons narrates the film, about a mother lion separated from her pride, attempting to protect her children from the dangers of the world, with the sort of steely-voiced gusto you’d expect from the veteran actor. His dramatic delivery sets the tone for everything that follows in the film - the editing, the cinematography, the music - and the drama seems forced. This doesn’t feel like a nature film writ large, it feels like an animated film brought to life. Each edit seems perfectly suited towards following the narration as closely as possible, so much so that it becomes hard to believe the the film is edited in sequence. So much so that I kept waiting for one of the lions to turn towards the camera and break out in to song. So much so that the brainless water buffalo, the mustache-twirling villains of the piece, are even given a leader and a terrible crime in which our hero can face down all odds to achieve justice for.

Though it isn’t believable as a nature documentary, it is an entertaining watch. The visuals in the film are, when unsoiled by digital effects, are stunning (especially a shot of the water buffalo that brings to mind a frothing river of released anger) and the final battle between buffalo and lion is gruesome in the way we’ve come to expect from National Geographic. I’m interested to see what National Geographic unleashes next and if it will stick to this new found formula or be more subdued, more documentary.


The Lesson:

Documentaries need not wear the costume of an animated action film.

- Noah Sanders -



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