Storyline
Narrated by John Krasinski ("13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi," NBC's "The Office," "Amazon's "Jack Ryan"), Disneynature's new True Life Adventure film "Born In China" takes an epic journey into the wilds of China where few people have ever ventured. Following the stories of three animal families, the film transports audiences to some of the most extreme environments on Earth to witness some of the most intimate moments ever captured in a nature film. A doting panda bear mother guides her growing baby as she begins to explore and seek independence. A two-year-old golden snub-nosed monkey who feels displaced by his new baby sister joins up with a group of free-spirited outcasts. And a mother snow leopard-an elusive animal rarely caught on camera-faces the very real drama of raising her two cubs in one of the harshest and most unforgiving environments on the planet. Featuring stunning, never-before-seen imagery, the film navigates China's vast terrain-from the frigid mountains ...
Writers: David Fowler, Brian Leith, John Krasinski, Xun Zhou, John Krasinski, Xun Zhou, , ,
I got to see a special advance screening of this movie 6 months before
its US release. I may mention certain specific moments of the movie,
but I won't spoil anything.
One of the producers came onstage before the movie started and talked
about how it took 4 years to film everything and then they edited
everything together to form each of the stories. This is noticeable in
at least one scene where it cuts back and forth between a panda and red
panda to imply they're looking at each other, but that's the only
noticeable instance that comes to mind.
Among all the animals they filmed, the three main stories center around
families of Pandas, monkeys, and snow leopards. The narrator tries to
anthropomorphicise everything the cute furry animals do. I know other
nature documentaries sometimes do that, this one does it a lot, trying
everything to make it more emotionally relatable, and I guess for the
most part it works, but it might get a little annoying at parts.
Speaking of the narrator, I assume there was a technical difficulty at
my screening since there was no narration for the first 10 minutes,
then all of a sudden he started taking as if we already knew who the
animals were. What's up with that?
It sorta goes without saying that the landscapes are beautiful and the
footage is impressive. What really sets this film apart is how much
footage they got of the snow leopards. If you didn't know, snow
leopards are very rare and notoriously difficult to photograph, let
alone film. Even Planet Earth didn't get anywhere near as much footage,
or as close. I'd say this movie is worth checking out just for the snow
leopard footage alone.
It's difficult for me to give nature films a numerical rating since
they're so different from traditional movies, so all I can really say
is its pretty good. I gave it a 7/10 because I ranked every movie I've
seen in theaters in 2016 from best to worst, and this movie falls in
the 7/10 block for me.
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