The African Lion

Release Date: September 14, 1955

Watch Date: February 16, 2023

 

    This is not so much a documentary about lions as it is a documentary about African animals where the lions gives a context and framework to the story, so I just want to get ahead of that. You will not be learning a lot about lions.

    To be fair, you won’t be learning a lot of new information about any of the animals featured in this film. There’s lots of basic facts which, I don’t know, were maybe not that well known when this film was first released, but we’re all inundated with wild life documentaries by this point, so we all have some general knowledge of African wildlife.

    Bob was of the opinion that this was nowhere close to as well done as ‘Living Desert’ – which has become, apparently, his favourite documentary of all time. “I don’t want to learn about the savannah! Show me the mountains, show me the animals we never get to see!”

    It’s a lot to ask from a decades old documentary, but I understand his frustration.

    This film features hippos, which are my favourite land mammal of all time, and they swim and everything. Hippos make me so happy, so I love this film no matter what Bob thinks of it – even with his entirely incorrect opinion on hippos. Who hates hippos? How am I married to a person who doesn’t like hippos? These are the important life questions that a good film brings up, and which should have come up before marriage.

    The True-Life Adventure series has been on a downward trajectory for the past little bit, and I don’t know how many we have left to go. I just have to hope that we end up revising course and get back the magic of the first two installments in this series.