Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Autumn and the Black Jaguar’ Review: Family-Friendly Film Is a Dismaying Bore for Kids and Adults Alike
After such films as “Mia and the White Lion” and “The Wolf and the Lion,” director Gilles de Maistre’s “Autumn and the Black Jaguar” reinforces the French filmmaker’s dedication to superficial family-friendly movies with an environmentalist cause at their heart. But as his latest shows, noble principles about the protection of wildlife and animals don’t automatically translate to a good screenplay or a watchable movie. You want to be moved by this seemingly conservation-minded affair, but “Autumn and the Black Jaguar” sadly turns into a cringe-inducing experience fast in a number of ways, undermining the intelligence and taste level of its young audience in the process.
Written by Prune de Maistre, the story follows Autumn (Lumi Pollack), a 14-year-old junior high student in New York City, being lovingly raised by his single father Saul (Paul Greene). Clunky flashbacks take us back to Autumn’s childhood while she was happily growing up in the Amazonian rainforest. Though the exact location is never quite spelled out, offensively presented as an “exotic” jungle of some kind. Through those inelegant cuts, we learn that Autumn was blissfully living with her parents and her best friend Hope, a gorgeous black jaguar she’s grown up with. (While some environs are flatly created via effects, the animals are real — two rescue jaguars, Hope and Gem, portray the wildcat at different ages.)
One day, poachers murdered Hope’s mother and put Autumn at risk, making Saul decide that it’s time to leave the rainforest for a safe life better suited to raising his daughter. When Autumn finds the letters that their close family friend and indigenous Chief Oré (Wayne Charles Baker) have been sending to her dad over the years, she discovers that Hope is in danger due to the threat of ruthless poachers, and decides to travel to the Amazons once again to save her.
Figuring out what she’s up to in the most implausible way imaginable, Autumn’s agoraphobic biology teacher Anja (Emily Bett Rickards) heads to the airport in panic, buys a ticket for a flight departing in two minutes to stop Autumn and remembers to bring along her injured rescue hedgehog. The whole development is as ridiculous as it sounds and ultimately one big headscratcher. Why Anja doesn’t just call Autumn’s dad, or inform the airline of the unaccompanied minor on an international flight, is anyone’s guess.
Once they reach their unnamed Amazonian destination, “Autumn and the Black Jaguar” takes an even worse turn, treating Anja’s femininity and mental health struggles with cruelty. In her skirt suit and heels, she is often nothing more than a hysterical and screaming trope, becoming a bigger nuisance for Autumn with each passing hour. At the same time, Chief Oré and his (once again, generically created and unnamed) tribe receive their own offensive treatment. In the costuming and makeup department, hardly anything about Oré’s people looks real, culturally specific or lived in.
If the film gave Autumn and Hope a deeper storyline throughout, that would at least have been something to root for, an emotional thread both adults and kids could have related to. But “Autumn and the Black Jaguar” shortchanges the viewers in that department too, settling for broadly lifeless scenes where the duo just run around. For that reason, once they reunite, the effect falls flat — there are much stronger human-animal reunion clips available on YouTube and social media.
Meanwhile, the stakes somehow never feel high enough when bad boss Doria Dargan (Kelly Hope Taylor) reveals her evil plan to capture the jaguar. Poaching, deforestation and the threat of extinction that jaguars face are real and important concerns all audiences — especially children — should learn and care about. Alas, “Autumn and the Black Jaguar” relegates these urgent issues to a film that looks and feels like an afterschool special.
Elsewhere, it’s unclear whether the movie sends the right message about the ways in which humans should engage with wild animals and wildlife. It’s respectful and appropriate to have a certain level of fear toward rainforests and wildcats like jaguars. But in the film, Amazonian jungles are portrayed like a playground, and Hope comes dangerously close to seeming like a pet. The worst offense of “Autumn and the Black Jaguar” arrives when Anja condescendingly preaches to the Amazonian people as a white savior of sorts, reminding them that while rich people like Doria might give their families money, what they’re actually doing is endangering their kids’ future.
Maistre undoubtedly has done some profound good by working with rescue jaguars and protecting the remainder of their lives in an animal sanctuary. Unfortunately, the virtues of “Autumn and the Black Jaguar” stop right there.
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