AFRICAN CATS (Keith Scholey, Alastair Fothergill). 89 minutes. Opens Friday (April 22). See listing Rating: NNN
The marketing material for Disneynature’s new Earth Day release, African Cats, frames the film as a “True Life Adventure” rather than a documentary. That’s probably a good idea.
Where Earth and Oceans let audiences bask in gorgeous footage of the natural world – constructing the simplest of narrative frameworks around it – African Cats wants to tell a story.
Directors Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill have shaped their footage (all shot on location at Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve) into the modern equivalent of the old Wonderful World Of Disney, following the parallel fortunes of an aging lioness and her cub on one side of a river, and a single-mom cheetah and five adorable cubs on the other.
But it’s not enough to let things play out as they would on the savannah. The story needs rivalry, grudges and noble sacrifices, imparted to us in voice-over by Samuel L. Jackson. The animals aren’t allowed to be animals they have to be characters in a larger, editorially created drama.
The HD footage of the lions and cheetahs – and the rest of the Kenyan wildlife – is consistently stunning. But African Cats shouldn’t be taken seriously as a nature doc by anyone over the age of eight.
