The BBC has a long history of producing top-quality nature documentaries, but Meerkats is a co-production with The Weinstein Company and the result is only a few steps down from a Disney film; hire a bunch of popular Hollywood teens to give the little critters voices and it’d show it in a truer light. The footage was real, no doubt, but much of it was constructed to fit a narrative, not the other way around. The falsehood can’t take anything away from the people who sat for long hours in the Kalahari Desert capturing the unedited footage, though; maximum praise to those brave, sunburned souls.
3 possibly perfidious perils out of 5
2 comments:
Was this originally a BBC production and the Weinsteins bought the American distribution rights?
Quite often when the Weinsteins or Disney buy the rights to a really great documentary from another country they drastically change it to screen in North America. Usually they alter the music, narrator and edit out the natural violence.
The credits said it was a co-production, but who knows for sure? They could've paid for that credit, too.
The music was enjoyable enough, used for optimum emotional impact, of course, just like Disney would.
Paul Newman did the commentary/narrated the fiction.
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