Critics reviews

In the late seventies, Tippi Hedren took the compulsion to relive the trauma of shooting Hitchcock's The Birds to a spectacular new level, when she and her then-husband, Hollywood agent Noel Marshall, induced their immediate family to participate in one of the most dangerous vanity projects of all of time... Sub-competent as a narrative film, but fascinating as a documentary about its own reckless, feckless, fraught filmmaking.

The movie precedes the pawsteps of C.S. Lewis' Aslan and Life of Pi's lifeboat tiger by presenting the kings in all their reigning glory, and even achieves moments of wilderness pulchritude that border on Terrence Malick-level harmony caught on camera. The real transcendent nature, however, is in the stunning cat fights and the non-bravado in the human performers' eyes, when it's evident they're panic-stricken and really, really scared that these breaths may be their last.

All the humans onscreen are clearly cowering in terror; this is supposed to be a Disney-style tale of people bonding with animals, but it plays like a nonfiction horror film.

Worth seeing for the details of its production history alone... but the real surprise is that Roar earns the "co-directed by the animals" credit slapped on the end of it. The lions end up dictating the film's form and narrative in shockingly deep-tissue way, making it both an ontological leap for forward for film and a total joy when viewed drunk.