Fascinating Animals:
Two Brothers, Weeping Camel & Garfield
By
Jan Aaron
Twin
tigers get top billing in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s family
friendly Two Brothers, a Southeast Asian based
story in which the humans play secondary (often dopey) roles.
With amazing animal antics (thanks to trainer Thierry Le
Portier) and exotic Indochina settings, the film is best
when focusing on the animals. Still it’s fascinating
enough throughout to charm kids and adults as well. Annaud’s The
Bear was a crowd pleaser
some years ago. Like that film, Two Brothers never
makes the animals cute as in cartoons.
The main story, taking
place in the early 20th century, spotlights two cubs born
amid exotic jungle ruins. Their separation is the heart of
this story. It happens this way: While romping in the jungle
in charming ways under their mother’s watchful gaze, adventurer-hunter Aidan McRory
(Guy Pearce) nearby raiding statues for profitable sales abroad,
discovers the tigers. McRory shoots the cubs’ father,
and snatches Kumal, while Sanhga and mom tiger escape. Later,
it becomes easy to distinguish the two brothers by the inventive
use of a jeweled necklace on one of them.
After beguiling scenes
of Kumal and McRory bonding, circumstances force him to sell
the little tiger to the circus run by evil Zerbino (Vincent
Scarito) Sangha meanwhile gets adopted by the local French
administrator’s son, Raoul
(Freddie Highmore.) Muddled subplots include developing the
jungle into a resort.
Later, the two cubs,
now grown, find themselves in an arena before His Excellency
(Oanh Nguyen) for a fight that never comes off. The picture
again focuses on the tigers’ destiny
to come to a moving resolution. (PG, 109 minutes)
Another must-see is The Story of the Weeping
Camel; a documentary set in the Gobi Desert. It’s
the touching tale of a family whose camel gives birth to
a white colt and rejects it. The theme of family love is
all-pervasive as the mom camel slowly accepts her newborn,
and it carries over to the human side as well. (PG, 93 minutes)
Back to cats, to amuse tiny tots, try the screen
adaptation of Garfield: The Movie,
Jim Davis’s long-running comic strip. The best scene
is a dance off between pets. (PG, 86 minutes)#
