Also checked out a random theatrical release called Mia and the White Lion. I had seen one trailer for it – but the movie is so obscure, the trailer was playing in front of another movie while it was already out. As if the theater itself didn’t realize the movie was actually playing already.
Mia and the White Lion is about a twelve year old girl whose family runs a wildlife preserve in South Africa. They make money as conservationists and as a tourist attraction. A white lion is born to them and they raise it like its a pet (even if the Mom and Dad keep saying it’s NOT a pet). Mia becomes fast friends with the precious cutie even as it grows up and starts to get more and more wild.
Most interesting thing about this film is that it was clearly filmed over the course of two or three years. I can’t say for sure if it’s the same lion at different stages in its life, but clearly the girl playing Mia is getting older, aging from a tween to a young teenager during the course of filming. And she must have spent real life time with that lion because there’s very little faking a young actress in the same scene with a full grown (if young) lion.
Which made me a little concerned. The movie has a message about trophy hunting (and specifically “canned” hunting where the animal was raised among humans and given to a hunter tourist to shoot). It’s as though this movie was directly inspired by the recent social media outrage over pictures of “brave” hunters and their kills. And that’s commendable of the movie… but it does this by also presenting the animals as pets or friends… it makes lip service to them being wild animals, but the story – and actual filming – was about a young girl spending quality time with her pet lion.
But, regardless of social messages or the practicalities of filming the flick, I was deeply bored by it. I was literally only interested in the structure and filming of it and not at all in the story. This is a dull, grinding movie that surely means well and is well enough acted. There is an interesting turn in the film that launches its final act but even that was ultimately disregarded by the plot and the main character. Not enough to recommend this sadly dull film.
Score: 59