Images courtesy of Blue Fox Entertainment
AUTUMN AND THE BLACK JAGUAR– 2 STARS
From the start, Autumn and the Black Jaguar has a heck of a kid at the center of its story– the kind you want to follow and learn more about. The titular teenage girl played in the present-day by Lumi Pollack of The Fallout is a progressive New Yorker attending a private school for the last few years after being born and raised in the Brazilian rainforests of the Amazon alongside her traveling international doctor parents Saul (Somewhere’s Paul Greene) and Ellie Edison (Eva Avila of The Coyote). Compared to her regimented life as an urban student, Autumn’s youth was an exploratory time of outdoor wonder where she imprinted a bond with a local black jaguar cub she named Hope. What kid pulls that experience out at the sharing circle in middle school?
In any case, these roots of an ecologically-connected and environmentally-conscious upbringing make Autumn different from her peers and teachers in the big city. When the day comes in Biology class for frog dissection, she’s the kind of kid to stand up in protest against the teacher, call the ASPCA on the spot with her cell phone, and risk expulsion to commit a little small-time vandalism by hanging homemade pro-animal life posters on the outside of the school. This girl has a contagious mindfulness and grit!
With her at the core, Autumn and the Black Jaguar has the proper traits for solid appeal for the family film crowd. Unforced and upright with her convictions, she is a strong and inspiring young female character viewers can appreciate and emulate. She stands for a fine message where an injection of heroism only makes her stances better and brighter. One day, Autumn finds a letter from a chieftain Ore (Wayne Charles Baker) of her previous home village addressed to her father alerting him of a growing deforestation and animal poaching situation in the Amazon, where the local jaguar population has been reduced to only one. She is convinced that lone survivor is Hope. Running away from the city without her father’s permission or accompaniment to board a series of planes, Autumn returns to her old stomping grounds in Brazil determined to find her old feline companion if she’s still out there.
LESSON #1: A CAUSE WORTH THE SPOTLIGHT– We learn Autumn’s passion as a mini-activist was made more ardent by her mother’s murder at the hands of poachers, characterized by cronies following the corporate zealot Doria Dargan (Kelly Hope Taylor of Netflix’s Good Sam). The trumpeted conflict against animal trafficking in Autumn and the Black Jaguar is, without question, a worthwhile stump to promote through gumption and positivity. It also matches the evident slant of filmmakers Giles and Prune de Maistre, who are, in essence, making a spiritual companion piece to their 2018 film Mia and the White Lion which combined a protective youth with at-risk wildlife on another continent.
As it stands at this point, the combination of the spirited heroine and a passionate cause in Autumn and the Black Jaguar are cornerstones for a sumptuous adventure. Working within its indie film means, a movie like this wasn’t getting John Barry’s orchestra or John Toll’s lenses to lift it to a wondrous level. Still, the additions of sweep from the musical score by Armand Amar (Where Olive Trees Weep) and the gorgeous animal footage and natural location shooting from cinematographer Olivier Laberge (lensing his first full-length feature) fit the vibrancy of the feature’s goals.
What could possibly hurt the good intentions and try-hard effort of Autumn and the Black Jaguar? The answer, unfortunately, manifests in one abundantly blunt place. It’s the insertion of a distracting supporting character that steals the oxygen and becomes the movie’s regrettably more dominant mouthpiece.
When Autumn bolts America for the Southern Hemisphere, the science teacher that got her expelled for her dissection protest, Anja Shymore (terrible character name), throws caution to the wind to chase Autumn on the same flights to Brazil. Lugging her disabled pet hedgehog as her emotional support animal and popping anti-anxiety meds like they’re Altoid mints, Anja is played by the top-billed former CW Arrow and The Flash star Emily Bett Rickards. With those ailments and phobias dialed to 11, what is supposed to be a proxy for the less-informed and open-minded viewer of the film becomes an absolute lead anchor for Autumn and the Black Jaguar.
Whether it was written on the page or pulled by the actress fleshing out a character for comic relief trying to become wiser by the end of the movie, the physical neuroses, teacher-’splaining rants, and preposterous decision-making bring down the film’s zest detrimentally. It reaches multiple points where Autumn and the Black Jaguar stupefies its own message when Ms. Shymore and Ms. Rickards are doing the talking and rescuing.
LESSON #2: LET THE KID DO IT– To say it plainly about Autumn and the Black Jaguar, just let the kid do it. Lumi Pollack shows headstrong confidence and commitment to the project. That’s really her interacting with the jaguars used in the film after months of prep work and acclimation, creating tangible chemistry. Lumi’s Autumn is the unquestioned heroine of cinematic journey and the character with the most invested and full-throated passion. Let her show and embody that—unencumbered by the false need to have an adult in the mix for supposed authority’s sake. No adults dawdle around with invasive help in E.T. or The Goonies or, worse, steal the climactic hero moments at the ending.
Let Lumi Pollack win her own movie. She deserves to. Instead, Autumn becomes the unnecessary damsel-in-distress when that’s been Anja embarrassingly all movie. Through confounding narrative choices, Emily Bett Rickards’ part exasperates every little thing, tarnishes tender moments, and grinds down the momentum and, sadly, the film’s good graces. When the important tipping points arrive in Autumn and the Black Jaguar, the wrong voice attempts to perform the pontificating and persuasion in the movie’s biggest moments. The heroes may have won the day, but the true poaching occurred to Lumi Pollack—not her majestic feline friend.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1274)
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