Disneynature Presents African Cats

Last weekend Zoe and I had the opportunity to watch African Cats in the theater. We headed off to have a mommy daughter day and started off with a great walk in the mall. Then we went to watch the movie, African Cats, and I showed her the poster of what we were going to watch, and she looked up at me with her big blue eyes and said, Mom, Those are LIONS not cats.

Yes, she’s right African Cats is about a family of lions, some cheetahs and a male lion with territory issues. In the African Savannah where this story takes place there is a north pride and a south pride of lions. The family in the south is known as the river pride and they have one male protector named fang. Now Fang is getting older and doesn’t seem to have any sons to take his place, but the male in the north, he has four male sons all old enough to fight, but the south pride is protected by the river but seasons do change and rivers dry up.

Samuel L. Jackson narrates the story of how Mara one of the lion cubs to Fang and one of the many lionesses belonging to him. Mara strives to be just like her mother in spirit. Who is one of the older lionesses and will do anything to protect her daughter even if that means that she has to stay behind because she is too old to go on. She even convinced her sister in the pride to adopt her daughter Mara, it was amazing to watch how the two lions communicated their needs to each other. She then left the pride to die on her own

Zoe loved watching all of the animals interact with each other. And I let her ask as many questions as she wanted as long as she whispered. One of her questions was, Mommy, why do Lions eat other animals. Thankfully, it really wasn’t graphic, but we did watch when the Cheetah took down a gazelle. Speaking of the Cheetah family, Sita is the mother of five baby cubs when the movie begins and she is all alone taking care of her babies. She doesn’t have a pride like the lions do to help her in any way. She has to care for them, feed them, and protect them all at one time. As we follow Sita she loses two of her children one night to a pack of Hyenas. I almost cried my eyes out as Zoe was aksking me what happened. We didn’t see it happen but we could hear how sad Sita was as she called out to her lost babies.

We then follow the families through the seasons as each family has to learn some very hard lessons.

African Cats is very educational and does not shy away from any of the facts of life, or the “circle of life”. Animals are born, babies and old animals die. Animals eat other animals, and even though Zoe was scared of some of the scenes she also found it to be one of the best movies she’s ever seen, “Mommy, this is a really Fun movie” I also greatly enjoyed watching Afican Cats and was quite impressed with how close they were or seemed to be to these wild animals.

During opening week, April 22-28th a portion of the proceeds from the ticket’s sales will be donated to the African Wildlife Foundation to protect the Amoseli Wildlife Corridor.

We received screener passes to preview this great movie. No compensation was received.