Review: Jungle Cat (DMC #32)
This week we tackled the 32nd film in the Disnerd Movie Challenge, Jungle Cat. Yes, it’s another True-Life Adventures film. But thankfully it looks like this might be the last of them for the foreseeable future! You can find our synopsis below for a recap if you need it, otherwise continue on down for our review.
Synopsis
The documentary opens with a brief history of domestic cats and how humans have admired and respected them, in part because they have resisted total domestication—they are still predators. In enumerating the great cats of the world, the narrator posits that the jaguar, which lives in South America, is the greatest of cats because it is the greatest hunter. We’re transported to the Amazon Basin in Brazil, home of the largest jungle on earth where the jaguar makes its home. It’s also the home of the Amazon River, which carries more water to sea than any other river in the world. We see the jaguar hunting large rodents called paca in the rain forest. In the “raw and untamed” jungle we see many different creatures like monkeys, iguanas, toucans, parrots, macaws, ibis, skimmers, egrets, flamingos, crocodiles, and serpents. While the golden and spotted jaguar we met in the beginning has been hunting in her territory, a newcomer arrives—an all-black male jaguar. A rough-and-tumble fight between the two quickly turns into a courtship, with the two playfully chasing each other through the jungle and the river. A hundred days later, they have two cubs.
Once the cubs are old enough, the mother jaguar teaches them how to swim. In the river we encounter several other jungle inhabitants: a playful otter, a “stick in the mud” capybara, and air-gulping fish that “belch” (called pirarucu). After the otter playfully messes with the pirarucu, the eight-foot black panther battles one of these seven-foot fish and brings it back to his family as dinner. The jaguar kittens learn to hunt first by chasing birds, but one of them lets out a “meow” that frightens the birds away. For a moment it looks like they’ll chase a baby monkey instead, but the monkey’s mother soon comes to its rescue. We then see the jaguar parents working together as a team to take down a peccary. We meet lesser ant-eaters and giant ant-eaters. While the jaguars are curious about the giant ant-eater they encounter, it manages to fight off the predators and swim across the river without being pursued. The jaguar parents now must teach their cubs about the dangers of crocodiles—by fighting one to the death. After the crocodile is vanquished, we meet several different kinds of monkeys, one of which makes the unwise decision to mess with a boa constrictor and becomes its next meal. The monkeys then harass a sloth mom and baby who fall into the water and narrowly escape becoming an anaconda’s meal. While one unfortunate sloth has a run-in with a jaguar, it manages to escape to the safety of a tree’s highest branches where the larger jaguar can’t hang on. A boa constrictor invades the jaguar family’s territory. After getting their young safely out of the way, the jaguar mother attacks the giant snake in what looks like a tug-of-war. The jaguar father then joins the fight, taking it to the water where the snake momentarily seems to gain the upper-hand as it muzzles the jaguar’s jaws, until the jaguar breaks free and sends the snake on the defensive. After a long fight, the jaguars are victorious, leaving the dead snake behind.
Thoughts Before Watching
Kevin: The bad news? Another True-Life Adventures film. The good news? The last True-Life Adventures film. There are technically more in this series, but I don’t believe they were theatrically released or are on Disney+ for that matter. This is the last nature documentary we’ll be watching until we get to Disneynature, so let’s get this over with.
Megan: Thank goodness this is the end of the True-Life Adventure films! I’m not looking forward to this one, but at least it’s a short one.
Thoughts After Watching
The best True-Life Adventure film?
Kevin: It’s not much better, but Jungle Cat was more enjoyable than most of the other True-Life Adventures entries. It follows in the footsteps of its predecessor The African Lion in that it keeps the humor at a minimum and chooses to focus mostly on the family of jaguars, with a little bit of time again spent on some of the other animals that live in the area. Previously I said I was disappointed that The African Lion didn’t actually exclusively focus on the lions, but this time I was prepared for it. I loved all those wonderful close up shots of the jaguars, although I do wonder just how they managed that. Frankly, this is the first film that doesn’t look staged in the slightest to me. The settings are wonderful as well; shots of the rain forest are beautiful to look at, and the filmmakers did a fantastic job capturing moments like a setting sun or cascading waterfalls. Of course, the other major reason this film is enjoyable is all the animals. It’s easy to appreciate a movie centered around jaguars, and Disney realizes that adorable kittens sell. There were several times throughout the movie where I was smiling at the jaguars’ amusing acts of play (that scene when the adults are playing in the water is too freaking cute). The monkeys are quirky, the sloths are adorable, and I especially grinned like a fool when an otter appeared on screen! (Otters are my favorite animal, something I’ve mentioned to Megan one too many times.) Not gonna lie, the mere addition of the otter is enough to raise the film’s standing for me! While it’s very hard to beat the scorpion hoedown from The Living Desert, Jungle Cat is a good contender. Finally, I think this one does the best at merging fun and information. We’re treated to a cool opening scene talking about how cats were revered in ancient times, and the narrator discusses the similarities between house cats and their wild cousins. These scenes are done through our good friend, the magic paintbrush, a gimmick of animation I’ll never tire of seeing.
Megan: The film quality definitely got an upgrade for this particular True-Life Adventure film. It wasn’t just the transition to a lush jungle after so much time in the arid (and largely brown) environments of previous True-Life Adventure films, either. Sure, having more colorful creatures like toucans and macaws set against a greener backdrop definitely helped keep things visually interesting, but I think the cameras must have been upgraded from what was used in previous films because the images were sharper and cleaner. Some of the closeup shots of the jaguars’ faces were particularly striking after so many films where the large predators were viewed largely from afar. I’m guessing with at least some of those shots there was a camera installed in a tree without a human controlling it, but in other shots it’s clear that someone was operating the camera to follow the jaguars through the jungle. In the end, though, even the best cameras and cinematographers in the world can’t save a film if the editing, narration, and story aren’t up to par. And, in my case, adding otters and animated paintbrushes aren’t enough to sway me.
The films look magnificent, just somewhat dull execution.
Kevin: On the whole we have not loved the True-Life Adventures films. It’s not as though I don’t enjoy documentaries depending on the content, but something about this series didn’t capture my attention as much as I would hope, especially for a topic about animals. After several films, all I can mostly say for this film and the series as a whole is that they aren’t all that fun, save for just a few moments here and there. Those few moments are what have kept the films from being scored lower (well… except Secrets of Life). The other reason is that they truly do look beautiful. I wish I knew for sure how they got some of those shots, whether they were truly real-life or the result of some Disney magic. Whatever it was, the success of (most of) the True-Life Adventures movies is in the technical work.
No wins for feminism, but no huge losses.
Megan: Like the other nature documentaries we’ve seen in this challenge so far, this film never comes close to passing the Bechdel test since the narrator is male and there are no human female characters at all. That said, it is the tiniest bit better than some of the other documentaries in that it mostly avoids blatantly sexist commentary. While the narrator commented on previous male/female relationships in nature through the lens of traditional human gender roles (especially those of the 1950s), such commentary is largely absent here. The only narration that struck me as a bit sexist was when the narrator described the female jaguar tending to her cubs as full of “gentleness and unending patience” while she is “dedicated to the care of her young.” There isn’t anything inherently bad about this statement on its own, but considering that such language is only used to describe the female and not the male only reinforces gendered stereotypes. Especially here, where both jaguar parents act as partners in caring for their little family, it seems strange to point out the jaguar mother possessing nurturing qualities and say nothing of the jaguar father when just moments before the female jaguar became a mother she was portrayed as a fearsome predator. Thankfully the rest of the film’s observations avoid this commentary, which makes it a slightly more informative viewing experience.
Can nature alone protect itself?
Kevin: There’s been a recurring message in this series about how nature protects its own, and we see it one last time in this film. But just like The Vanishing Prairie, the narrator does not outright say humans, too, should help protect the land. Nature does what it does, but humans have certainly interfered and not always for the best. Given the recent Amazon rain forest fires in 2019, humans doing their part could certainly help. It’s not hard to imagine that the filmmakers would be appalled at the deforestation efforts that continue to happen. Since the making of this film it has only gotten worse, and many species are at risk of losing their homes and their lives. We’re dangerously on track to a point of no return if we don’t reduce our carbon footprint. Even though nature can and will go on, we are able to help it or hinder it. Because the documentaries have always stopped short of addressing humanity’s impact on the environment, we can’t say for certain what Disney Studios’ stance was. In a lot of ways, these films come off more as entertainment than education (at least to us), so there may not have been any attempt to address this issue. I don’t believe I’ve seen a single Disneynature film, but I’m hoping that they will take a more direct approach in not just educating about wildlife, but also how it can be helped.
Verdict
Megan: 3
Kevin: 4
Final Score: 3.5
What did you think of Jungle Cat? Did you enjoy this one or any of the other True-Life Adventures films? Tell us below in the comments!