Cynical Cinema

Alliance Films is releasing Jane Goodall:  When Animals Talk today, September 2nd, on DVD.  This is another DVD that comes from the people at Animal Planet, one that features Jane Goodall, famous for her 40 years working with chimpanzees.  And she talks to animals.  Like chimpanzees.  It’s easy to roll one’s eyes when we see Goodall beginning a speech by making chimpanzee noises, and it’s also easy to tune out when we see people talking about their pets and how they seem to sense when daddy’s getting home.  Yeah yeah yeah.  They’re animals.  We get it.  Pets are not interesting to me.  Show me a komodo dragon that knows when your husband is getting home.  And waits in his bushes.  THAT would be interesting.

But then there are the creatures that are fascinating.  There are killer whales that actually beach themselves in order to eat sea lions, and in doing so they establish a dialogue with the man who has been studying them for years.  After they rip sea lions to shreds, he goes in the water and plays with them!  (I would rather have seen them eating more sea lions, myself…that was pretty cool.)  Then there is the parrot that not only speaks, but actually understands speech, has conversations with people, and may have a telepathic bond with his owner.  (You have to see this bird to believe it.)  And then there are the elephants, the rats, the whales and…more pets.

Which means that more than half of this DVD is interesting.  Whales and elephants and rats and their methods of communicating with each other and with us are fascinating.  Cats are not.  Dogs are not.  If only this documentary had stayed away from commen house pets, it would be great.  As it is, it’s just decent.  But that parrot alone makes this worth checking out!

The Jeff Corwin Experience is a show on Animal Planet starring a Crocodile Hunter type guy who visits exotic locations, seeking out exotic animals, then picks them up and shows them to the camera.  The first season comes out on DVD tomorrow, September 2nd, from Alliance Films, and starts out in Borneo.  Corwin finds elephants, sea turtles, orangutans, snakes, bats, creepy-looking proboscis monkeys, and tree frogs.  He then moves on to India for episode 2, where he finds cobras and all kinds of other exotic wildlife.  The animals are cool, the locations are cool, and the episodes feature as many animals as possible.  As Season One continues through Arizona, Alaska, Indonesia, Thailand, Madagascar and the Galapagos, we get to meet many animals we would ordinarily not get to see.

But the show isn’t great.  And the problem is the host.  Jeff Corwin is a likeable guy.  He kind of looks (and acts) like Ryan Reynolds, only without the really funny stuff.  Just the kind-of funny stuff.  But he talks too much.  He does a few set-pieces that are meant to be funny, but really we just want to see more animals.  Enough about you, already!  Let’s get to the proboscis monkeys!  That being said, this show is certainly good for kids.  They will be entertained, and at the same time they will learn about the natural world and perhaps something about conservation as well.

On Tuesday, August 19th, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing three DVDs in the Growing Up Animals series. Growing Up Wildcats contains four hour-long episodes about baby…well, wildcats. Although “wild” cats might be the wrong word to use. You see, the four episodes centre around baby lions, baby tigers, baby cheetahs, and a baby black leopard. But none of them are wild. The lions have been rescued from abusive owners near San Antonio. The tigers have been bred in captivity at a wildlife refuge in Texas. The cheetahs are from a wildlife breeding ranch in South Africa. And Edie Falco (of the Sopranos) hosts the special episode about the rare black leopard, also bred in captivity.

Not that this is a problem - each of the cats in these programs relies on their human benefactors for survival. So it isn’t exactly like watching animals growing up in zoos. But after a while, I found myself really wanting to see these animals grow up in the wild. I wanted to see how cheetah parents raised cheetah cubs, not how humans raised cheetah cubs. In the end, this is basically like watching one of those shows about babies on Lifetime Network. Only, the babies grow to be 600 pounds and could conceivably eat people. And I don’t think there’s any doubt that tiger babies are far cuter than human babies.

Growing Up Safari is one of three DVDs released by Alliance Films on Tuesday August 19th. These DVDs are part of the Growing Up series from Animal Planet, a series that follows the development of young animals from infancy to the point where they are re-integrated with their adult populations. Growing Up Safari follows the story of young rhinos, hyenas, zebras and giraffes as they grow up. These four animals are certainly not as cute as those on the Growing Up Wildcats DVD. Rhinos are kind of cute, because as babies they’re just so strange looking. But hyenas have a bad rap simply because they’re pretty ugly creatures, baby zebras look exactly like adult zebras, only smaller, and baby giraffes are so gangly and awkward that it’s hard to consider them cute. It’s also hard to use the word “cute” to describe something that comes into the world seven feet tall.

Also ruining the “cuteness” factor for the giraffe - the fact that after it’s unceremonious introduction to the earth - a drop of ten feet to the ground - it is then covered, head to toe, in a life-giving but certainly disgusting waterfall that consists of like sixty gallons of giraffe afterbirth. There was something about seeing this that I found…disconcerting. As in all the other Growing Up DVDs, we see death, birth and disasters befall these tiny animals, and at times the series can really tug at the heart strings, as when we see the caregiver of a young hyena named Homer have to deal with the loss of his young charge. But again, I watch these episodes feeling like I’m not really learning much about the animals themselves, but more that I am learning about the people who raise them. Which is still interesting, but not as interesting as the animals are.

There are three Growing Up DVDs being released on Tuesday, August 19th, from Alliance Films. They are DVDs from an Animal Planet series that features young, cute animals as they are raised from infancy by humans. Often they are orphaned, and left alone, or perhaps they come from abusive owners and needed to be rescued. The three DVDs, Growing Up Safari, Growing Up Wildcats and Growing Up Arctic are pretty much interchangeable, except that the wildcats are cuter and the safari animals are more interesting. But the best of the three DVDs is Growing Up Arctic. Partly because there may be no creature on Earth cuter than a baby penguin - unless it’s a baby seal. And both those animals are featured on the disc. Also featured are the polar bear (also terribly cute) and the walrus (not so cute, but awfully darn cool).

These are some of the only episodes that take place at zoos - the penguins are hatched at the Oregon Zoo, the polar bear cub is given a chance at life at the Toronto Zoo, and the walrus baby grows up at the Indianapolis Zoo. The baby seal isn’t at a zoo, however, as it gets nursed back to health at the Alaska Sea Life Center. Growing Up Arctic is the best of the three DVDs in that it’s slightly more interesting than the others. But, like the others, it’s just cute, and that’s about it.