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Duma

2005, Movie, PG, 100 mins

Duma: Review

DUMA
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If you're hungry for animal adventure that doesn't feature cutesy animated critters cracking wise and capering to Randy Newman song, this is your chance to pounce. Like any creature feature worth its salt, writer-director Carroll Ballard's gorgeous coming-of-age adventure opens with a trauma that could bring a grown man to tears: a trio of peeping, impossibly cute cheetah cubs watch helplessly as their mother is killed by an enormous lion. Alone and frightened, one of the cheetah babies wanders out of his South African game preserve and onto a remote stretch of highway — right into the path of an oncoming car. Luckily, the vintage Porsche stops just in time, and the orphaned cub finds a loving home with farmer Peter (Campbell Scott), his wife, Kristin (Hope Davis) and their young son, Xan (Alex Michaletos). Kristin suggests naming him "Duma" — Swahili for cheetah — and soon Xan and the big cat are inseparable. When Duma is full grown and is capable of going from 0 to 60 mph in a mere two seconds, Peter gently reminds Xan that it's time for Duma to return to the wild where he belongs. Xan argues that Duma knows nothing about surviving in the wild; Peter assures him that instinct will kick in. But mere days before their father-son trip back into the Kalahari, Peter succumbs to a brain tumor. Kristin sells the farm and moves to the Johannesburg, where Xan will attend school and Duma will be given to a game preserve. But Duma escapes and follows Xan, so instead of returning home, Xan takes his father's old motorbike and, with Duma riding shotgun, embark on the journey Peter had planned for the three of them — a dangerous trek into the wilds of South Africa to Duma's rightful home. Very loosely based on Xan and Carol Cawthra Hopcraft's illustrated children's book about Xan's pet cheetah, Ballard's film carries a wonderful message about the things we all carry inside, whether a dead parent's love for a child or a captive-raised animal's ability to survive in the wild. Ballard's career is rooted in beautifully shot films about children coming of age alongside animal companions (NEVER CRY WOLF, FLY AWAY HOME, THE BLACK STALLION), and it's hard to understand the shabby treatment Warners gave this moving and marvelously entertaining, opening it in a handful of theaters with almost no publicity. At a time when good family films are at a premium — witness the surprise success of MARCH OF THE PENGUINS — there's really no excuse. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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