Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees (2002)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

David Lickley

Writer:

Stephen Low (writer)

Release Date:

7 May 2002 (Canada)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

A cinematic portrait of the great zoologist and the chimpanzees she has spent a lifetime studying.

Plot Keywords:

Nature | Zoologist | Chimpanzee | Animal | Scientist

Cast

Jane Goodall	...	Herself / Narrator
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Marc Strange	...	Narrator (additional)

Directed by
David Lickley

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Stephen Low		writer

Produced by
Michael Boeckmann	....	associate executive producer
Mike Day	....	executive producer
Becky Kirkpatrick	....	associate executive producer
James Lahti	....	associate producer
David Lickley	....	producer
Kathryn Liptrott	....	line producer (as Kathryn Liptrott Galligan)
Jim Marchbank	....	executive producer
Freda Nicholson	....	executive producer
Carolyn Thain	....	associate executive producer

Original Music by
Amin Bhatia

Cinematography by
James Neihouse
Reed Smoot

Film Editing by
James Lahti

Production Management
Charles Braive	....	production manager: second unit
Rick Gordon	....	post-production supervisor
Annie Toth	....	post-production manager

Sound Department
Alek Bromke	....	voiceover recordist
Richard Calistan	....	adr mixer
Ed Douglas	....	sound editor
Henry Godding Jr.	....	voice recordist: French version
Goro Koyama	....	foley artist
Andy Malcolm	....	foley artist
Cory Mandel	....	sound re-recording mixer
Christopher Miller	....	assistant sound editor
Don White	....	foley recording mixer
Don White	....	sound re-recording mixer

Visual Effects by
Jon Cowley	....	visual effects art director: Toybox
Mark Goldberg	....	rotoscope artist
James Jacobs	....	3D animator: ToyBox
Phil Jones	....	visual effects supervisor
Zachary V. Lowe	....	computer animator
Nick Perks	....	3D animator: ToyBox
Fiona Campbell Westgate	....	visual effects producer

Music Department
Jamie Hopkings	....	orchestrator
Cory Mandel	....	score recordist
Cory Mandel	....	scoring mixer

Other crew
Steven Lewis	....	production attorney

Production Companies

• Discovery Place, Charlotte
• Science Museum of Minnesota
• Science North

Distributors

• IMAX (2002) (worldwide) (theatrical)

Country:

USA | Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.44 : 1

Company:

Discovery Place, Charlotte

Great documentary on Gombe

I've seen this documentary first at an IMAX theatre and later on DVD. The reason to view it was due to the music of Johnny Clegg featuring in it. In my opinion, the best IMAX movies are those which show spectacular nature because that would be most impressive on a large IMAX screen. Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees is about chimps, not impressive natural phenomena, so my expectations where moderate. Thankfully, it was better then I expected, and not because the short arial shot of Africa, but due to the content of the story.

The emphasis of the documentary is clearly on Jane Goodall and the chimpanzees she studies: the documentary briefly tells what she discovered beside telling the story of her life. Despite the sad truth that only 150.000 chimpanzees remain in Africa today (against 1 to 2 million a century ago), the mood of the documentary remains positive and focuses on the human aspect (no pun intended). I appreciated that the documentary refrained from having too many emotional taglines, which seems to be common in American documentaries. I recall that the movie only became melodramatic (bweh) once; the other times it either remained with the facts or it was clearly an opinion of Jane which was portraited.

Comparing it to other IMAX documentaries I recently watched: it was better then "Greatest places", which has more great (IMAX like) footage but has no storyline, but not as good as "Dolphins". I think the music (songs) and score (background music), which beautifully blend together, are better in this documentary, but I may be biased.

As for the DVD, it's not the same as seeing in an IMAX theatre, and despite that the source has such a high quality, I personally did not see that much of a difference between this and DVD made with regular cameras. However, the many bonus features on this DVD, like the behind-the-scenes, trailers, making of the music, commentaries (both from Jane Goodall and the director) make it a great addition to the movie.