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African Cats Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson

Written by Jonathan Jacobs

African Cats is a signature Disneynature film that will soon appear on Blu-ray and DVD. Recent, and globally heralded Disneynature films include Earth and Oceans, one of which has been reviewed and is hyperlinked for your reading pleasure. Whether you intend to view this masterpiece with your children or to use it as a vehicle to relax on a crisp autumn evening there is no doubt, African Cats will fill you with pride. For a storyline as complex and revealing as this one is, it is truly a work of genius that the Disney film crew was able to capture and share with the world this unbelievable story in all of its glory.

Samuel L. Jackson may not win the orator of the year award, but he is a real gentleman for devoting his time to narrating African Cats. He blunders some of the sentences but overall he narrates the action succinctly, with great attention to storytelling and with not a little bit of excitement. The two families, one of river lions, and one of cheetahs, are beautifully personified by Disney’s journeymen cameramen. All of the footage is in real time and was shot with the fastest speed film available.

The first family is a river lion’s pride. The two most featured cats are Mara (the cub) and her mother Layla. Against the call of nature, Mara chooses to remain with her injured mother while the bigger and more ferocious lions in the pride leave at a faster pace to stave off starvation. As the narrator smartly points out, without the entire might of the pride at their side, Mara and the injured Layla are in great danger. In this picture, the lions hunt hippo and zebras. Layla helps the other lions because she is the most experienced hunter, but going on the attack is never without its dangers. She was kicked and marred by a fleeing zebra running for its life while be pursued.

In order for the smaller lions to survive, meat must be provided for their growth. Until the cubs reach their full size or maturity, they are best kept relatively protected and provided for. Before leaving Layla to nurse her wounds, the master of the pride Fang (fresh off a broken tooth that looks ripe for a dentist’s trained excision tools) wards off several river crocodiles. The crocs will only respect Fang’s warnings because he is the biggest and most potentially destructive. Later in the film Fang’s true mettle will be tested when he is outnumbered by more aggressive enemies.

Our second and perhaps cuter (in the domesticated pet sense) family are Sita (a mother cheetah) and her five cubs. Sita hunts lesser pray such as gazelles and brings the meat home to her little ones. The cheetah cubs are significantly smaller and more vulnerable than the lion babes. Being a single mother responsible for the caretaking of five offspring proves more than challenging, it becomes deadly. Sita’s natural enemy is Kali, a massive lion and a real king of the jungle, is five times her size though not quite as quick or as agile. Kali finds her migrating on open ground and thus hopelessly vulnerable. Making a spur of the moment decision, Sita draws Kali and his four sons’ attention away from her terrified little cubs and for a time, she saves their lives. Unfortunately, night falls quicker than the panicked mother expects and she is unable to locate all of her children. Two of her unguarded little ones are lost to ravenous hyenas during the night.

These two dueling stories that are told with great devotion and majesty in African Cats. Every blade of grass is crystal clear, each hair on the cats’ bodies can be viewed without a flaw, all of the zebras’ stripes are perfectly visible, and when the cats run toward their prey or away from their predators, their bodies move in startlingly undulating ways. Despite the felines’ amazing speed, it is almost as though their movements are caught in slow motion as a boxer’s punch can be when all of the blood, sweat and tears are dislodged from their bruised opponent’s face. To their credit, Disney made the audacious decision to allow some visibility of death and the lethality of hunting. Very little is left out and no detail is spared. With Samuel Jackson at the helm of this life and death struggle for survival in a beautiful but inimical land (in Southwestern Kenya at a national preserve), African Cats is not only a nice addition to Disneynature films, it is a headliner on its own. This is one film that is worth watching over, and over again. Two paws up, claws et al.