- Released: February 1, 2024
- Directed by: Gilles de Maistre
- Running time: 1h 40min
- Rating 3/5
Synopsis
My Thoughts
This seems to be the third Gilles de Maistre movie in a row which is about a girl/young woman and the wild animal she befriended. I've already reviewed the previous two movies, Mia and the White Lion and The Wolf and the Lion, before. So let's have a look at this film here.
It is...okay. Honestly I think this might be the weakest out of the three. It's not bad, but it just isn't very good. Just...kind of mid. There are elements I genuinely do like. I like Autumn's relationship with Hope and her teacher. Ms. Shymore in general is a very enjoyable character (and honestly at times the only reasonable person out of the main cast). I also greatly enjoyed Oré, Autumn's uncle who isn't in the movie much but is still a nice character. Autumn herself also isn't...bad, but she can get on one's nerves especially with how she never really obeys anyone and only thinks about Hope.
Which I get is supposed to be an admirable trait, but when it repeatedly puts both her own life and even those of the people around her at risk it becomes a bit grating at times. Heck, even her mother got killed in a situation with the wildlife traffickers but at no point does that make it seem like Autumn's more careful because of this fact.
My main issues with the movie though lie more so with the structure and the entire climax hinging upon a plot hole. First of all, the structure and pacing of the movie seems a bit...wonky. Not horrible but it doesn't quite feel fully realized. The first third speaks for itself: Autumn and her teacher travel to the Amazon and try to find Hope. But once they find Hope it's like the plot doesn't quite know what it wants to do. Does it want to be a journey a wildlife corridor where Hope can live safely and in peace? Does it want to be about the indigenous people's (Autumn's family) struggles as their land and resources are being taken by greedy people? Does it want to be a movie about standing up to the wildlife traffickers?
It...kind of tries all three at once, and while I think that in a way this maybe could've worked, the way it is currently structured feels a bit weak and all over the place. Like, the goal of getting Hope to the wildlife corridor is abandoned pretty quickly. Autumn and Hope are then captured by the wildlife traffickers, and Ms. Shymore manages to unite the locals as they stand up to the villains and Hope and Autumn are released. But this climax, the unification of the people and defeating of the villains, happens so quickly it barely leaves an impact.
Like, Autumn and Hope are captured and you'd expect at this point there'd be a bit of a back-and-forth between the villain and our heroes, where one and then the other gets the upper hand before ultimately good triumphs in the climax. But nope, it's just "Hope and Autumn are captured, Shymore unites the people, the villains are instantly stopped and taken away by the police, the end." And this all happens so quickly that it doesn't get much time to sink in. And then you'd think the final conclusion would be getting Hope to the wildlife corridor where she can live safely in the wild and in peace, but instead she stays in the rainforest with Autumn and her father as a semi-wild pet of hers.
So the whole wildlife corridor idea was abandoned with no clear rhyme or reason. One could argue that Hope is safe in the current rainforest, but we don't know how long that'll last. The current traffickers might've been defeated, but it's not like a new group couldn't show up to this unprotected land and try to capture Hope again, considering she's quite valuable. The safe wildlife corridor genuinely sounds like the best and safest option here, but Autumn is letting that go in favor of keeping her pet even if it means risking Hope's safety in the future.
Now, for the huge plot hole the entire climax hinges upon: It's Ms. Shymore's phone. Throughout the journey she recorded some videos on it of Autumn and Hope, and Autumn's capture, and by showcasing those at a local news station she manages to rally the locals to put a stop to the traffickers. Lovely, and it all makes sense on paper.
If it weren't for the fact that it was established that Ms. Shymore fell into water and swam multiple times without securing her phone. Meaning that thing definitely should've stopped working after that. At no point is she established to have kept it in a safe plastic bag or anything, and she and her bags were entirely submerged in water in these scenes, so that phone definitely should have some water damage by all logic. But the movie just forgets about this and the phone completely functions normally. Heck, they don't even bring it up, I guess because drawing attention to it would make the plot hole even more obvious. This would've easily been prevented too if they had just shown Ms. Shymore securing her phone safely in a waterproof bag or something, or holding in her hands above the water where it can't get wet.
One thing I do like is that this is the first Gilles de Maistre movie of this kind to feature a decent amount of characters of color. I've pointed this out, but in his previous movies, especially Mia and the White Lion which literally takes place in Africa, there were very few characters of color, especially in Mia where it literally doesn't even make sense that we only see white people in our main cast. There was only one named character of color in said movie, and she was the butt of a bunch of jokes, so that's not exactly great representation.
Here, that was handled a bit better. I can't say how well the representation was handled exactly because I'm not of the ethnicity Autumn and her people are, but it is nice to see quite a few characters of color here who have a major role in the movie, especially since again it makes sense since we're in an Amazonian rainforest where the locals logically would play a role in such a story. And they're nice characters, too, I like Oré a lot and Mia's friend/cousin(?) also made for an interesting more two-faced character (though I wish she got a little more comeuppance for working with the traffickers). And of course Autumn herself was a nice main character when she wasn't constantly endangering herself and others.
So overall I'm a bit mixed on this movie but I do like it. I do wish Gilles de Maistre keeps making movies like that because they are always quite enjoyable to watch, but I think he could work on his plot structures and plot holes a bit, since these were also the case in The Wolf and the Lion.
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