AUTUMN AND THE BLACK JAGUAR: 2 STARS. “a conveyance for environmental lessons.”
French director and journalist Gilles de Maistre specializes in making family films like “The Wolf and the Lion” and “Mia and the White Lion,” that raise awareness about the protection of animals and the environment. His latest, “Autumn and the Black Jaguar,” about the bond between a young girl and her childhood friend, the jaguar of the title, is a sweetly saccharine story with some mild action-adventure woven around its messages regarding illegal wildlife trafficking.
Lumi Pollack spent ten months imprinting with two jaguars in the jungles of Mexico to prepare for the role of Autumn, a precocious fourteen-year-old who grew up in the Amazon rainforest. As her animal rights activist parents work fighting against poachers, she forms a bond and helps raise jaguar cub Hope. When Autumn’s mother is killed by poachers, her father (Paul Green) relocates them to the urban jungle of New York City.
The jaguar is always on Autumn’s mind, and when she learns her childhood village is under attack by poachers, she goes rogue, and returns, with her socially anxious biology teacher (Emily Bett Rickards) along for the ride, to find Hope before the poachers do.
“Autumn and the Black Jaguar” is a wholesome film, fit for the whole family, with oversized performances, stereotype characters and predictable story beats. But, as an issue forward filmmaker, de Maistre shapes the movie’s events to suit the messages, not the other way round. The result is a movie that works mostly as a conveyance for environmental lessons about wildlife trafficking than a convincing action-adventure film.
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