Review: The Living Desert (DMC #17)
Hello and happy Friday, Disnerds! How is your quarantine going? Even as we continue to self-isolate, our challenge goes on! This week we watched The Living Desert, the seventeenth movie in the Disnerd Movie Challenge. This is our first documentary in the challenge, and with little plot and few defined characters to talk about, our thoughts are a bit shorter than usual. Continue on to our synopsis if you haven’t seen this, or read further for our review!
Synopsis
The narrator introduces the audience to the desert lands of California, over the mountains of the Sierra Nevada and crossing into Texas. Notable landscapes such as Monument Valley provide the setting for the desert environment. The critters of the desert live in harsh conditions, but they get by. Birds use prickly cacti to form protected nests, male tortoises fight for dominance while wooing a female mate (with the loser being literally overturned), and coati scavenge for bird eggs. Occasionally, a bobcat may unwisely pick a fight with a wild pig.
Nighttime brings out other creatures. While bats take flight, smaller critters such as tarantulas, scorpions, and long-horned beetles are out to court mates. Elsewhere, kangaroo rats dig holes to hide their food and create nurseries for their young, kicking up sand to distract both nosy neighbors and dangerous predators. An owl and a ring-tailed cat squabble over a kangaroo rat long enough for their prey to escape. The next day, ground squirrels pop out of their holes, and the ultimate battle is fought between the pepsis wasp and the tarantula. Every so often the daily struggles of these creatures is interrupted by heavy rain, resulting in flash floods. New flowers bloom after the floods, providing fresh nourishment for some of the desert animals. This is the cyclical nature of the desert, time after time.
Thoughts Before Watching
Kevin: I don’t think I’ve heard of this film, nor have I seen it. But it’s a documentary, and a nature one at that. It has the potential to be interesting or dull—I’m just predicting this one will be the former. Also, I’m not familiar with the True Life Adventures series, but now I want to know more.
Megan: I was a huge nature documentary aficionado as a child, but I don’t think I ever came across this film or any others in the True Life Adventures series. Judging by the preview image Disney+ is using, I don’t think this will be a cute and cuddly documentary, but hopefully it’s not super boring.
Thoughts After Watching
Kevin: This was definitely interesting. In fact, it was more enjoyable than I expected. I think it may just be that Megan and I are both suckers for cute animals (and there are a few here). There were some interesting tidbits I either didn’t know about or might have heard about before but forgotten, such as the moving rocks and the spitting mud pots. I heard this film was created by filming the animals in their natural habitat, but I’m… skeptical. It’s a well shot documentary, no doubts there, but some of it was hard to believe it was all in the desert. I’m certain some of it had to have been shot in a studio somewhere.
The camera work is impressive!
Megan: See, I disagree with you, Kevin. I don’t think they shot any of this in a studio exactly (except for the animated intro). While I think they must have had to do some sort of interventions to show us the inside of some of these creatures’ burrows and tunnels (probably placing a sheet of glass alongside the tunnels and then sticking a camera and lighting equipment in the ground), I think the rest of it is a matter of setting up the proper camera and lighting equipment and then patiently waiting for whatever wildlife may enter the “stage.” I’m sure it must have taken so much patience and hours of unusable camera footage (or hours of waiting for something to happen before recording) to final bring this edited version to life.
The humor was the best part.
Kevin: After reading reviews of this film, it turns out a lot of folks don’t like the way Disney used humor in this documentary. Of particular note is the hoedown between the two scorpions. Well, I have to say we found that incredibly hilarious! I admit I can see why it’s out of place and is too ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop laughing through the whole sequence. Also, the narrator’s general commentary helps make things more interesting.
Megan: Agreed! The scorpion square dance was the best part!!! Okay, yes, the clips were edited to play forward and backward a few times to better simulate the “dance,” but I totally enjoyed it! The way the narrator adds humor throughout the documentary makes this whole film more interesting. The stuffy academics who thought humor didn’t belong here were clearly mistaken—humor is the way to share educational information without losing your audience!
The kangaroo rats were my favorite!
Megan: I gotta say, throughout this whole film I was a little nervous that even though this was made by Disney, we might unfortunately witness one creature eating another. While this was true in the instances of some insects, I was relieved this was never true for the cute kangaroo rats. In fact, Kevin and I were both busting up laughing watching the kangaroo rats kick sand at the sidewinder, at a nosy neighbor, and basically anyone they didn’t want near them. Such a hilarious yet effective defense strategy!
Still, it’s not worth re-watching.
Kevin: I did enjoy this, but at the end of the day it’s a documentary, and there are very few (if any?) documentaries that I can re-watch over and over. It was entertaining enough to spend an evening watching it. I liked watching the animals and seeing how they interact, and perhaps one day I’ll show this to my children. However, it’s very dated, and by the time I show it to any kids it’ll be nearly a century old, and so much of our understanding of desert life has changed. I can’t see myself watching this again if it’s just me.
Megan: I think there’s some valuable educational content here for any teachers wanting to teach their students about life in the desert, but I worry that today’s kids might be bored by it given that it is a bit dated. For me, even though I like nature documentaries, I don’t think I’d go back and watch this one again. Oh, and obviously this doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, since it’s narrated by a man and the few female critters don’t speak to each other in any human language.