The Wolf and the Lion

On its own, I don’t hate The Wolf and The Lion as a title. It is a title that sounds like a metaphor.

Is this a film about two aggressive individuals, with varying traits that differ in their aggressive attitudes that makes one of them more wolf-like and one more lion-like? Usually with metaphors like this, one of them is seen less as a predator. I could imagine a title like The Lamb and the Lion easily. Or the Wolf and the Worm. Some nice alliteration there.

Maybe these are two superpowered individuals, one good, one bad. If so, I bet the Lion is the good one. They like making wolves out to be the bad guy, for some reason. Actually, there is a Game of Thrones episode named The Wolf and the Lion, and it was in Season 1, so you know it was a good episode.

And then you realize that the title is just referring to one actual wolf and one actual lion, and things can get a bit disappointing. Like an accurately, yet stupidly, named audio recording on the internet.

“Hi, I’m wolf-” “And I’m Lion!” “And this is our podcast.”

Alma (Molly Kuntz) has inherited land! In the Canadian wilderness. It did come with the death of her grandfather (Jean Drolet), however. She basically has this whole island to herself, a private forest island, in the middle of a lake. Where animals can be free and she can live with nature. She has plans to go and join an orchestra as a career, but she is going to put that off for now, due to anxiety, or whatever.

Anyways. Surprise number 1. A rare-ish breed of wolf was living on the island, and it befriended the grandfather and his house and would just exist there. So now it will do that too with Alma with the similar smells. And it will also hide its wolf cub there. Because two scientists (Derek Johns, Charlie Carrick) are getting onto her property to try and tag and capture the wolf, for “research.” So Alma tries to hide them out in her house, keeping the cub after the momma goes missing.

Surprise number 2. A tiny plane crashed on her island. It had a lion cub from Africa, that was being brought to a circus to be trained. They want it back, but it escaped, and she hides it as well. She (and her grandpa) notably hated how circuses treated their animals.

And that is why she has a lion cub and a wolf cub to care for and bond with on her island. And due to plot, where she gets injured in such a stupid way, people are brought in to help her, where they also take the wolf and lion away. Now they have to get back together, or whatever.

Also starring Graham Greene, Rebecca Croll, Rhys Slack, and Evan Buliung.

“Today our next guest on this podcast is, Human Lady!”

Well, if I could start with a positive, I would say this is a really well shot movie. I mean clear. The cameras were nice. Lot of nature. I don’t think the cinematography was anything special, just that the cameras used to shoot the movie must have been nice ones.

And there, that is about it.

I did my best to explain the plot of the film up there, and it is not just dumb, it is unnecessary. They had to go to great lengths for a lion cub and a wolf cub to befriend a young human woman. And then go to more lengths to have this friendship even matter. Because after a montage of growing up together, they had to be separated, then the animals had to individually be in a bad spot and show it, and then individually escape, and then everyone slowly be reunited. And then the movie is over.

It is like Homeward Bound, if the pets were actually a rat and a seagull and they weren’t already friends before the movie started. And we don’t even get badly talking animals communicating. It is just animals. Apparently they went out of their way to make this movie work, by having a real lion and wolf cub grow up together, and mostly only be around the star, and all of that. Cool. It also had sixteen script revisions based on how the animals acted. Guess that explains how the story was such a pointless story overall.

The filmmakers just wanted to have a wolf and a lion be friends. They did that, and then filmed a bad story around it, for some attempt at profit I guess. I am glad I didn’t show this one to my kids, they would have been bored to tears.