Review: 'Born to Be Wild 3D'

A large-format (IMAX) nature film of the type normally seen in museums and science centers, "Born to Be Wild 3D" celebrates the efforts of two intrepid women, half a world apart, who rescue orphaned animals and return them to the wild.

This is very much "a fairy tale," as Morgan Freeman narrates. Director David Lickley ("Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees") and his crew follow Birute Galdikas, a researcher on Borneo who evolved from studying orangutans to saving them. Their habitat is being destroyed to make way for vast palm-oil plantations. Her team picks up the orangutans, some of them pets, and teaches them what they need to know to return to the jungle. Human staffers become mothers to the orphaned ones, feeding, bonding and singing lullabies to them, keeping just enough distance to let them remain "wild." Once the apes are old enough, they're taken to a national park and released.

Daphne Sheldrick has been doing something similar in Kenya with elephants orphaned because their moms have ivory tusks. For half a century, Sheldrick has been perfecting elephant baby formula and raising whole herds of orphan elephants that return to the wild as a herd.