Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Once Joy Adamson's true-story account of raising and freeing a lionness became a huge bestseller, the film adaptation was inevitable. The story itself was very cinematic, with Africa and its wildlife as a backdrop. Director James Hill wisely makes heavy use of voiceovers from the actress playing Joy, Virginia McKenna, while the camera lingers on Elsa the lion.

If anything, the story is moved along too quickly. The necessity of crowding a full book into a ninety minute film reduces the dramatic impact of secondary storylines, such as the death of a beloved pet rodent, and the recovery of Joy's husband George (Bill Travers) from drug dependency and malaria.

George, a British game warden in Kenya, is forced to kill the man-eating parents of Elsa and her fellow lion cubs. Rather than leave the cubs to a certain death, he brings them home, and the mothering instincts of his wife Joy takes matters from there.

Elsa's siblings are eventually exiled to zoos, but Joy cannot part with her favorite. But once Elsa becomes unmanageable, Joy schemes to repatriate her to the wild.

Joy's husband George Adamson served as a technical consultant. The actors in the lead roles, McKenna and Travers, were married in real as well as reel life.

The true stars of Born Free were the trained animals. While making the film must have required endless patience from the cast and (especially) the director, the results are seamless. The lions always manage to convey the proper emotion, and in a seemingly natural way that human actors often only aspire to.

While Born Free is universally considered to be a family film, it does have a few troublesome aspects. The first is the European colonialism of Africa, which is a political discussion that is best avoided here.

Much like man, however, the lion is a hunter that must kill other animals to sustain itself. When Elsa successfully makes her first kill, one can't help but feel sorry for the hapless and peaceable victim. This somewhat diminishes the triumph of the moment that we are expected to relish for Elsa and her adoptive parents.

Born Free won the two Oscars that it was nominated for, Best Song and Best Score. "Born Free" does have a melody that sticks around in your head, but the same can be said for an advertising jingle. The score as a whole is admittedly rousing, but is also repetitive and syrupy.

The success of the movie eventually spawned a sequel, Living Free (1972), and a short-lived television series, "Born Free" (1974). Joy Adamson did not live to see the latter, as she was killed in 1972 by an employee who tried to pin the murder on one of her own lions. (64/100)

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Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8