Dereck Joubert	...	(Director)
Dereck Joubert	...	(Writer)
Jeremy Irons	...	Narrator

Comments: You have to watch this as a movie, a fiction film, like a live action The Lion King not as a documentary. It's actually more like Oppenheimer. It's got lens flares and filters, a real soundtrack, slow motion and flashbacks. Throw in stunt doubles galore and we're good to go. It's a beautiful film. And just like how Oppenheimer turns it's lead character into something like a Marvel Universe Superhero ... same here. Her name is Ma di Tao ("Mother of Lions")

Jeremy Irons' narration is at its sappiest. Dereck Joubert's writing, its most cloying. The good thing is it's quiet and sparse, not like one of those Big Cat Doc narrators who sounds like he's calling a NASCAR race

The purpose here is to tug on heartstrings to text "LIONS" to 50555 and give $10

The story (with <spoilers>)
Ma di Tao, her fukboi and their three young cubs are overrun by a pride of 12 lionesses and 3 or 4 males who want their land
Fukboi is killed
Ma di Tao escapes across the river to an isolated island. A crocodile snags one of her cubs on the way over
A herd of buffalo cross the river and come to the island as if Ma di Tao ordered them from GrubHub
The only kill Ma di Tao makes is a calf which the hyenas (where did they come from?) quickly steal from her
The buffalo herd is angry about the calf so they seek out Ma di Tao's cubs to stomp them to death
Ma di Tao returns to where she had stashed the cubs and they are gone
Oh wait! There's one!
It's got a broken back, dragging its rear end around like a bag of garbage (pro tip: reach for the Kleenex when this segment starts)
Ma di Tao walks away from her disabled child and starts hunting those damn buffalo again
Ma di Tao's other lost cub shows up out of the blue, but it's in buffalo harm's way
The pride of a dozen lionesses that chased Ma di Tao from her homeland notices this stressful situation and screams "We've got your back"!
Ma di Tao: "I am Iron Man"

Even the most casual viewer will be struck by the obvious assembled-from-spare-parts nature of the film. Ma di Tao has six week old cubs. She's gonna have swollen teats. The lion shown doing most of the hunting in the film doesn't have swollen teats, and etc

The lion population had shrunk from 450,000 to under 20,000 in the past 50 years

I'm down with the Joubert's. Their conservationist messaging is fine. They've made some of the very best Big Cat documentaries of the past thirty years. They live amongst the cats in Botswana and know them well

This story is so over-the-top it would be funny if it didn't make you cry


Summary: Fifty years ago there were close to half-a-million lions in Africa. Today there are around 20,000. To make matters worse, lions, unlike elephants, which are far more numerous, have virtually no protection under government mandate or through international accords. This is the jumping-off point for a disturbing, well-researched and beautifully made cri de coeur from husband and wife team Dereck and Beverly Joubert, award-winning filmmakers from Botswana who have been Explorers-in-Residence at National Geographic for more than four years. Pointing to poaching as a primary threat while noting the lion's pride of place on the list for eco-tourists-an industry that brings in 200 billion dollars per year worldwide-the Jouberts build a solid case for both the moral duty we have to protect lions (as well as other threatened "big cats," tigers among them) and the economic sense such protection would make...