Cats! You know you love 'em! Or maybe you don't. In that case, watching Disneynature's African Cats may give you a new appreciation for these fascinating creatures. Or maybe it won't. That's the problem -- mixed in with a few blessings -- with handsome-looking documentaries like this one: They present the wonder of nature smoothed over and shellacked for our enjoyment and possible edification. But in the end, does African Cats really bring us that much closer to understanding the essential mysteries of catness? Or does it just cop a cattitude?
African Cats, directed by Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey (the former was one of the creators of the BBC documentary series The Blue Planet), follows two cat families, lion and cheetah, as they raise their cubs -- with varying degrees of success -- on Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve. On Team Lion, we have the elder statesmen, Fang (so named because a broken tooth dangles rakishly from his lips), who protects a group of lionesses and the cubs he's fathered with them. Danger lurks, though, in the form of a gang of lion brothers who hope to move in on Fang's territory, not to mention ingratiate themselves with his lady friends. Fang's pride has a tough enough time just finding enough prey to keep them from starvation; the last thing they need is a Sharks vs. Jets face-off.
On Team Cheetah we have Layla, the loneliest mom. Cheetahs don't live and travel in groups; cheetah mothers raise their young alone, and sure enough, sad-eyed Layla is constantly circled by five cheeping, purring kittens, their stubby tails tapering to stiff points. The kittens' physical and spiritual resemblance to housecats is stirring, which is one reason you may want to think twice before taking very young children to African Cats. Layla can't keep an eye on her cubs every minute, and at one point a group of predators separates her from them: Then, as they say, there were three. (The abduction doesn't take place on-camera, but watching Layla mewl plaintively for her missing babies wasn't particularly fun for me; maybe your four-year-old is made of tougher stuff, but be forewarned.)
Mostly, though, African Cats is extremely tactful about the truly harsh stuff that goes down in the world of nature. When the cats move in for the kill, pouncing on gazelle, zebra and the like, the camera-work slips into ultra-tasteful slow motion, so we can admire the cats' powerful haunches and mighty jaws without having to fixate too much on the feelings of their future dinner. This is a story told, after all, from the cats' point of view, and they're just doing what big cats (and small ones) do.
African Cats doesn't sugar-coat that, but it doesn't rub our noses in it, either.
Yet in the end, it's maybe all too pretty and not quite dramatic enough, considering the trials these magnificent felines must face just to, say, get to a part of the country where there's actually enough food for them to eat and water for them to drink. African Cats chugs along on the pretense that it's not anthropomorphizing its subjects or making them too cute (even though, at times, they are pretty cute). We're supposed to admire their majesty from a respectful emotional distance. But that also prevents us from caring about them that much; they're specimens prowling the savannah somewhat anonymously, just doing their job. I remember feeling a stronger connection with the birds in Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud and Michel Debats' Winged Migration -- and I'm a cat lover.
What's more, the picture is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, who sounds a lot less like God than Morgan Freeman does. Maybe that's a good thing: Jackson's brisk, clipped delivery speaks of menace and mystery; it somehow seems more honest and up-front than Freeman's falsely soothing, all-seeing, all-knowing dulcet tones. Still, African Cats doesn't quite do justice to its strange and remarkable subjects. It gets them ready for their close-ups, all right. But it stops short of seeing through to their souls.