,Is it time for FrogFrog to deliver a PanPan? While I would love to have seen a nature documentary about whatever those creatures were in The Great Wall – now there’s a thought; has anybody ever made a nature mockumentary? I think there’s potential there … or there would be if we didn’t live in the alternative facts universe. Anyway, giant hive-mentality lizards are not the focal point for this documentary, but instead the camera finds a year in the life of a herd of chiru, five golden snub-nosed monkeys, four whooping cranes, three snow leopards, two giant pandas, and SingSing the partridge in a pear tree.
Almost everything I know about pandas comes from hot YouTube zoo pandacam action, so to film in the wild is a small coup; also, it’s very difficult not to be impressed with year-round snow leopard footage at 14k feet above sea level. I’m not sure I learned anything new about either species, but you gotta be kinda heartless not to enjoy panda cub footage. In case you found my opening sentence insensitive, the four animals named in the film include mama panda Ya Ya, her daughter Mei Mei, an adolescent golden snub-nosed monkey Tao Tao and a female snow leopard Dawa. You’ll forgive me me if get caught up up.
This documentary is all about family life. Disney knows its audience. Dawa has to raise two cubs in a land where food is scarce; Tao Tao has to compete with a baby sister for attention and occasionally finds life-threatening trouble as a result, the chiru females travel far to give birth and then mother and child must make the wolf-riddled journey back to the males of the herd, oh, and Ya Ya has to get Mei Mei to learn how to climb a tree. Some lives are a tad more perilous than others … although the latter did beg the question: how many times does one have to see a baby panda fall out of a tree before intervening?
Disney dumbed this one down almost to the breaking point. While the documentary did consistently repeat the unfamiliar to western ears species “chiru” (sort of a Tibetan migratory antelope), I don’t remember hearing any
more than “monkey” to describe the golden snub-nosed variety of primates in the film.
Honestly, I hate the dialogue in Disney nature films. I want to say that our narrator/host John Krasinski takes some blame, but truth is I couldn’t stand Samuel L. Jackson during African Cats, either – and if Sam Jackson isn’t making me happy, nobody is. Disney’s constant reliance on describing what’s on screen so that it’s relatable to a six-year-old boy takes its toll. Do you have to anthropomorphize everything?! Sometimes animals are just animals; they share different values because survival is not a given in their world.
At the end of the day, however, how can you hate a panda? Cheesy jokes and mediocre science will keep Born in China well away from a “Top __________” list, but the film should amuse and mildly frighten the random child. Try not to get stuck seeing this one more than once.
It’s a natural outdoor Chinese zoo
Monkeys, leopards and pandas, too
My knowledge abused
I’m left confused
None of them did any Kung Fu
Rated G, 79 Minutes
D: Chaun Lo
W: David Fowler and Brian Leith & Phil Chapman and Chuan Lu
Genre: When animals distract
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Fascinated children
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Panda haters. Seriously, is there anyone out there who actually hates pandas? Not just indifferent – hates. Want to say probably my youngest brother.
