A big cat-astrophe

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This article was published 12/04/2019 (2532 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The hook of this South African-set drama is that Charlie, the white lion of the title, isn’t a CGI creation like Aslan in the Narnia movies, but the real deal — an apex predator who was raised from a cub and grew up alongside his human co-star, Daniah De Villiers, over the course of three years.

The gimmick works — it’s fascinating to watch the beautiful cub (actually named Thor and trained by “lion whisperer” Kevin Richardson) grow into his giant paws and see his mane come in like a scruffy mohawk, while De Villiers’ Mia goes from kid to teenager, complete with braces and her own wild mane of hair.

It’s unfortunate that the veracity of that relationship is just about the only thing that rings true in this clunky film. The implausible plot relies on heavy-handed foreshadowing as it lurches clumsily through significant moments, and the dialogue ranges from totally unnatural to laughably expository.

Worse, its worthy message about protecting the wild lion population is undermined by the hypocrisy of training real lions to be actors.

Mia’s parents — John (Langley Kirkwood, a robot put together from Daniel Craig’s spare parts) and Alice (Mélanie Laurent, stuck in a vapid role) — have returned to South Africa from London to run the lion reserve that was owned by John’s grandfather.

Mia hates her new home, remaining unswayed by the elephants and giraffes in her backyard or the adorable little critters adopted by her brother, Mick (Ryan Mac Lennan), until her heart is won over by Charlie, a rare white lion whose draw as a tourist attraction will help the struggling reserve.

Mia’s father allows her to keep Charlie like a house pet — he actually brings him in on Christmas morning like a present — and then has the nerve to give her the old “wild animals can’t be tamed” lecture when Charlie starts, you know, acting like a wild animal.

It’s unsettling to watch the dubious parenting on display when Charlie, in play, knocks Mia to the ground and her mother just shakes her head wearily. More unsettling is the constant romanticizing of her relationship with the big cat and the anthropomorphizing of Charlie into a “friend” who would never hurt her.

When common sense finally kicks in and Mia is banned from interacting with Charlie, she reveals to her brother that she’s been “sneaking” in to see him every day. (Charlie lives in a chain-link enclosure about 20 metres from and in full view of the house.) Apparently, nobody thought to keep the keys somewhere she couldn’t get them, which isn’t really surprising, considering her parents also let a 150-pound adolescent lion climb all over their kitchen table, break their TV, destroy furniture and sleep in bed with their child.

It doesn’t help that the script (by William Davies and Prune de Maistre) is far-fetched and the direction by Gilles de Maistre ham-fisted. The reality of the human-animal bond is undermined by one preposterous scene after another (an elephant unlatches a gate for the children; Mia shoots her father with a tranquillizer gun).

The film is advocating for an end to the “canned lion” industry, where wild cats are raised by humans expressly for the purpose of being shot by trophy hunters. This industry, the filmmakers say, preys on unsuspecting volunteers, who are working at what they think are conservation reserves, and conned tourists, who don’t know the provenance of the animals they shoot. But director de Maistre includes a scene in which a lion is dropped off by truck in an enclosure (owned by the film’s over-the-top villain Dirk, played by Brandon Auret) right in front of a couple of coddled big-game hunters, who shoot it before it has time to run 50 metres.

There’s an uneasy sense of disingenuousness throughout, as the movie is guilty of its own kind of animal exploitation and of encouraging the behaviour it aims to curb. Last year, on the South African reserve run by Richardson, a woman was mauled to death by a lion who broke free from a supervised walk with the trainer — an unfortunate reminder that wild animals don’t exist for our entertainment.

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @dedaumier