Duma

This is a well-made and enjoyable mix of real-life nature fable and boy’s own adventure, predictable in its emotional arc but surprising in its details. There are echoes of Twain and Kipling, among others, but director Carroll Ballard has his own vision as well, from The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf to Fly Away Home. Here a South African family finds a cheetah cub that has lost its mother, and raises it to adulthood, when it will need to be reintroduced into the wild. A few plot twists send the boy on a quest to return the cheetah to its natural habitat. Along the way, he meets up with a black man who will become his guide and antagonist. They traverse a desert and the Okavango, encountering all sorts of animals and adventures. The acting is all good or better, with the cheetahs stealing the show ("Duma" is cheetah in Swahili.) It says bad things about the state of moviemaking and distribution today, that Warner Brothers chose not to give this film any sort of launch and dumped it in theaters only at the behest of critics and advocates who had seen it. The dvd comes without significant extras either. This isn’t a great film, but I can recommend it as high-quality family entertainment. (2005, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-82.)