- Released: June 21 2004
- Directed by: John Downer
- Running time: 1 h 30 min
- Rating 2.5/5
Synopsis
My Thoughts
I have only seen this movie once before (and a few clips in my childhood) but I definitely liked it more on my first watch. I don't think it's bad, per se, just kind of... mediocre, I guess.
The plot follows Suki as we follow her, her brother Linus and her cousin Fleck in their pride. The trio learn all sorts of life lessons, however are under constant threat of the Wanderers, lone males with the intention of taking over the pride from across the river. Things get even more complicated when Suki falls in love with the leader of them, and now has to choose between her loyalty to him and her former pride.
Overall that makes for a decent enough plot, but the execution kind of bogs it down. It just feels very meander-y and never quite knows what to focus on. Sometimes the main focus is Suki's vegetarianism, sometimes it's just about lion cubs growing up and learning lessons, sometimes it's the threat of the Wanderers, but it doesn't feel like there's a real plot, just elements of a plot kind of shoddily shoved together to form loosely a story.
The characters feel much the same. I feel that Suki is one of the only ones to actually have a decent arc. Others do have somewhat of an arc as well, however the execution once more feels very unfocused, to the point it was sometimes kind of hard to follow what was going on. Fleck being an example, with him going from rightfully hating the Wanderers for killing his family to joining them in the end. Dark also is kind of flip-flopping between good and bad. He participated in the killing of Fleck's mother at the start of the film and is a central antagonist, however other parts of the film show him as noble and kind. You can have complex characters, but it just feels a bit all over the place with how they were handled here. Suki's arc is still the best, but the conclusion is also just not all that great.
All movie she refuses to eat meat (even into her adulthood, with the exception of carrion now and then) and when she finally does hunt it's just...I don't really know how to feel about it. It's good, I suppose, since she's hunting for her cub, but on the other hand you have this character who stuck to her own morals for the entire movie and now you finally see her just do what everyone else tells her. And I'm just disregarding the fact that lions cannot live without meat here, suspension of disbelief and all that. Suki was super strong-spirited and always followed her own will to the point of leaving the pride at one point, so to see her become just another pride lioness following the laws of the pride was a bit disappointing. I guess her arc is meant to show the importance of sticking together in a pride, but I honestly liked seeing it as a moral of the importance of individualism.
The visuals are...interesting. So, this movie does actually fall into the category of "talking live-action animal movie with CGI mouths and expressions". You know, like Racing Stripes or Cats & Dogs. Thing is, most of those movies seem to use sets and trained animals (usually domestic ones, too). Pride instead was filmed on location in Tanzania and seems to use little to no trained animals. Rather, it looks like they just filmed a lot of footage of these (possibly wild) lions and ended up constructing a story around it, which might be while the plot and character development feels a bit off. I can't confirm this, of course. Maybe they really did have a plot written going in, but it just doesn't look or feel like it. And while of course it results in a not very well-executed end product, I do really admire them filming them like this. If they do turn out to not be wild lions, at least they were filmed in their natural habitat rather than on a set.
The animation on their mouths and expressions is honestly varying. Sometimes it looks okay, but there's also a lot of times where it's aged poorly. Heck, even some talking CGI-mouthed animals from the time I've seen looked better than this. Maybe a budget issue, I don't know. Just...don't expect this to look fantastic by today's standards.
Something else that comes up in the movie, with it using real lions, is that it tends to get kind of hard to tell who is who. I've seen people complain about this to no end in The Lion King (2019), but honestly I never really had that issue as despite looking like real lions, they still had distinct-enough character designs and voices to be able to tell who is who. Here, however, you can only recognize the characters by certain things such as scars or broken teeth. Otherwise, most adult male and female lionesses all look the same. It wasn't a huge issue as usually their position in a scene and voice made it kind of clear who is who, but I think that children (a.i. the target audience) will find it hard to distinguish them.
Speaking of this movie being about children, there's also some...not so great scenes for them in here. Being about real lions, this movie does show real animals fighting and hunting. And, yes, also eating gory carcasses. There is blood, there is visible flesh. It's nothing outrageous, but definitely not for the younger/squeamish among us. But what made me the most uncomfortable (content warning for mention of rape/incest in the rest of this paragraph and the next) is the scene where Fleck, Suki's cousin, mind you, tries to make sexual advances towards her. And she clearly does not want it. And after that it's just played off all teasingly like nothing serious. Like, in the context of the movie it's very clear that what just happened was an incestuous rape attempt, but the way it was played off was just so casual?
And even if it wasn't played off like that, this is no content for a kid's movie. I get that, with filming real animals, you get real animal behaviors. Heck, I can even agree that showing hunting/fighting and eating real dead animals is okay so long as it isn't too gory. But there are certain things you're not supposed to show them at this age, especially when the seriousness of what just happened isn't even addressed. These lions are also anthropomorphized. While they do to an extent act like lions, they also have plenty of human elements to them, so to just see them show a casual rape attempt on Suki by Fleck was very yikes to me.
That aside, the movie is just pretty mediocre Looks okay but pretty dated, the story and character development feels unfocused while it does have potential, and aside from that one scene with Suki and Fleck it isn't really all that bad. Just mediocre. I wouldn't recommend this to younger viewers or even older ones, but if you like lions and can handle the subject matter featured you could always give it a go if you insist. It's literally available on YouTube split into nine parts if you want to.
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