"The Wild" is a Disney film that should be subtitled, "Why we had to buy Pixar for $7.4 billion." It's so bad that you really start to wonder what the Mouse House was thinking. The animation is so-so, the plot verrry similar to the slightly better 'Madagascar'. My son, displaying Hollywood executive-level powers of verbiage, called it "Madagascar meets The Lion King". He also told me, after it was over, that he found it "hilarious", but there weren't a lot of laughs coming from the kinder while we were watching.
As in seemingly every Disney film, mom is nowhere to be found. This time, dad is a lion who dazzles crowds at the "Manhattan Zoo" with his big lionly roar. Sonny boy lacks roaring ability, which is a source of much shame. Dad tells son stories of heroic derring-do in "the wild", but it turns out (SPOILER ALERT! Ah, who cares) that pops is a big fat liar who has never set foot in the jungle -- that is, until son ends up there after stowing away in a crate in an effort to prove his mettle to dad. You will be shocked to learn that dad finds his animal senses again and saves the day, son learns to roar, there are other animals that display truly, deeply, wacky behavior. There is even inter-species romance between a squirrel and a giraffe. (I'm as tolerant as the next guy, but, like, ew.) Many elements show up from other, better films: bad guy wildebeests ('Lion King'), a stampede ('Lion King again), chameleons who spell out the direction that Big Daddy Lion must go to find his son using oddly hallucinogenic arrows (the jokey school of fish in 'Finding Nemo'). The kids didn't care too much, but with the bevy of family films available on DVD, cable, et al, there's no need for parents to suffer through this nonsense. But Brett, what do you really think? Not recommend.
image: Amazon.com
Related posts:
