It's hard to see why nature lovers would go to theaters for "The Last Lions," which, despite a solid narrative thread and impressive intimacy level with its subjects, feels little different from plenty of stuff you can watch for free at home.
The documentary depicts the struggle of one lioness who, after her mate is killed, must care for her offspring while fighting for territory with a rival pride and attempting to kill one or two buffalo from a massive herd that just moved into the island in Botswana she calls home.
The challenges are well drawn, and husband/wife filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert spend enough time here (they've kept a tent nearby for seven years) to capture the critical moments with a surprising number of close-ups. (Massive telephoto lenses surely were required.)
But in writing the narration delivered in caramel tones by Jeremy Irons, Dereck Joubert is distractingly fond of anthropomorphizing his feline subjects. He has given his heroine the name Ma di Tau ("Mother of Lions") only to imagine that she's fighting for that honor, at one point even living with shame after failing to live up to the moniker.
Elsewhere, he admits, "we don't know about animal grief," only to go on to project "a broken heart" and a "storm of emotion" on the beast — every contrivance tailored to fit a narrative that, once it reaches its end (after many false finishes), could clearly have been laid out in almost opposite terms.
Still, we do get must-have elements such as dramatic kills (with the gore just outside the frame) and cute lion cubs, whose fuzzy ears are half as big as their heads.
The film's ecological message, tacked on awkwardly at the start and end, is that lion populations have plummeted from 450,000 to just around 20,000 in only 50 years. That is shocking, and isolating single tales of survival and social-group formation like this one surely help persuade outsiders that lions are worth saving. But "The Last Lions" has a heavier hand than we should expect from the National Geographic Institute, which is behind this production, and isn't nearly gripping enough to justify exhibition on the big screen.
"The Last Lions"
Our grade: C
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 88 min
MPAA rating: PG
About the Author
