Yesterday Dad took me to see The Last Lions, and it was fantastic. It's a family drama set in the animal kingdom: the story of a lioness and her cubs struggling to find a home in the Okavango Delta which is ever more pressured due to the disappearing habitat surrounding it. You can watch the preview here (and 10 cents will be donated to big cat conservation in Botswana). "The cubs' lives have been a litany of narrow escapes, a long line of enemies out to get them - a strange way to start life for the kind of the beasts."The film is narrated by Jeremy Irons (who also voiced Scar in The Lion King), whose thick accent brought a certain gravity to the film, though there were a couple lines I thought were a tad overdone. There is a lot of anthropomorphizing, and thought it fits with the footage and really draws you into the story, I wonder if the movie would have been just as powerful without it.
The scenery and camerawork are incredible, the natural soundtrack evocative. The subwoofers in the theater really brought to life the deep, hollow calls of the lions. The overlaid musical tracks aren't bad either.
Beware, however: there are a few scenes that are horrifying to our delicate animal sensibilities.
Bottom line: "Africa is as dispassionate about great victory as it is about loss." That certainly appears to be true. Thankfully, it's not at all true of the film. When can I go back to Africa?
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