Movie Review: 'Endangered Species' Good Intentions Can't Mask Bad Melodrama

The makers of the new movie Endangered Species starring Rebecca Romijn appear to have their heart in the right place. Director M.J Bassett is a nature documentarian by trade and is passionate about the protection of African wildlife, specifically the waning Rhino population. Unfortunately, crafting a melodramatic narrative about the need to protect the Rhino is deeply misguided in execution. When a rich family gets caught in the middle of the African wilderness while just trying to see a Rhino, it’s hard not to root for the rhino to teach them a lesson.

Endangered Species stars Rebecca Romijn, of X-Men fame, and Phillip Winchester from TV’s Chicago Justice, as Lauren and Jack Halsey. Lauren and Jack are traveling to Kenya with their son, Noah (Michael Johnston) and daughter Zoe (Isabella Bassett), in hopes of reconnecting as a family. That’s complicated by mom letting Zoe bring her hippie doofus boyfriend, Billy (Chris Fisher), to tag along on the family trip. Jack and Billy do not get along as Jack believes Billy is the reason his daughter has abandoned her education track.

The family is rather well off as the story begins. Dad is a consultant for an oil company but after a recent oil spill, he’s on the outs and this trip is suddenly one they can’t fully afford. This is important as Jack can no longer afford the guided tour of Kenya to see the wildlife. Instead, Jack opts for a cheaper option, touring without a guide. Moreover, Jack takes advantage of distracted staff at their hotel to slip out of the camp without telling staff and without paying the rental fee.

To say that Jack is ill-prepared for an unguided tour of the African wilderness is an understatement. The entire family is ill-suited for roughing it and when they encounter a rhino, they end up nearly being gored to death after accidentally driving between a mother rhino and its baby. The rhino flips the family’s jeep, tearing open Jack’s leg in the process, and breaking the glass water bottles that the daughter insisted that dad bring instead of the wasteful plastic bottles he’d planned to bring.

Creating further Job-ian trials for the family, mom’s insulin also broke when the rhino flipped their car and she’s slowly drifting toward a coma. Then the hyenas show up and the hippie boyfriend nearly becomes a hyena buffet. Needless to say, the Kenyan tourism industry will not be huge fans of this movie. Part of the allure of the African wilderness is the exotic danger but in Endangered Species, the dangers appear biblically linked to the sinners who dare dwell in the unspoiled beauty of the African wilderness.

The movie gets even worse from here. Jerry O’Connell co-stars in Endangered Species playing a very non-comic role. O’Connell plays a rhino poacher, trading in illicit rhino horns. When the struggling Halsey family stumbles across O’Connell and his nameless lackeys, they take the family hostage, adding to their Job-ian trials. Not wanting to be captured and executed, the typical punishment for rhino poachers in Kenya, O’Connell plans to murder the family and frame the local hyena population for the crime.

I will leave you to discover how many of the family members survive this worst vacation ever. I may not be recommending that you see Endangered Species but I don’t have enough enmity for the movie to spoil anything or even to strongly tell you not to see it. As I said at the start, the filmmakers have their heart in the right place. Endangered Species does want to call attention to the plague of Rhino poaching and they are using this mainstream narrative adventure to further that agenda and that is something I can get behind.

However, putting aside the good intentions of Endangered Species, the movie is poorly executed. The central family is a squabbling group of stock characters who are assigned random traits and little happens within their respective arcs to create any essential drama. The family is spoiled and since Dad Jack lost his job after his company caused an oil spill, there isn’t much of a rooting interest among the family which includes a supremely bored Rebecca Romijn, the spoiled daughter and a son at odds with his dad because the son is gay. These traits don't appear to come from real people but rather from the dull necessity of the screenwriter to try and approximate a personality.

Sad to say, but the true rooting interest in Endangered Species is with the rhinos. I’m not saying that this family gets what they deserve for taunting nature with their uninvited presence, but, I’m not not saying that either. I have empathy for people in bad situations but when you cause trouble for yourself, especially by arrogantly taunting nature, my sympathy is limited. There had to be a more effective way to tell a conservation story without making a family melodrama filled with stock, unlikable, characters spouting uninteresting dialogue and fumbling their way toward possible death in a series of credulity stretching, borderline satirical bad choices.

Making matters worse in Endangered Species are poorly made CGI rhinos. Now, I am never going to make the case that they should use real rhinos in a movie, that’s awful and humans need to stay away from rhinos and leave them to thrive in peace. But, if you are going to center your story on an encounter with rhinos, you must make sure your CGI approximation is really good or your movie will be rendered laughable. The CGI rhinos of Endangered Species are laughably bad, rubbery, poorly proportioned and appear to change size from one scene to the next. Jim Carrey's mechanical rhino in Ace Ventura Pet Detective 2 looks more realistic in comparison.

Then there is the issue of trying to make me take Jerry O’Connell seriously as a villain. This is just not in O’Connell’s range. O’Connell has played comic doofuses his entire career and this hard left turn into being a villainous poacher borders on parody. O'Connell looks and acts like he's in a Tremors sequel and not a deathly serious movie about the preservation of rhinos crossed with a family in danger adventure. O'Connell appears to make no attempt at changing his typical onscreen demeanor and his dull sarcastic delivery renders him more like a comic bully than the big bad guy in an action movie.

I have nothing but praise for the good intentions behind Endangered Species but this is just not a good movie. The characters aren't interesting and inspire the bare minimum of empathy for their basic humanity. The characters are stock with traits assigned seemingly at random while Rebecca Romijn appears as if she'd rather be anywhere other than this movie. O'Connell, at the very least, is energetic but his energy and performance are all wrong for this heavy drama.

Endangered Species arrives in limited theatrical release and on-demand rental release on Friday, May 28th. If you want to know more or work toward protecting endangered rhinos from poaching, the World Wildlife Fund is one place where you can make a contribution. It's also a far more worthy effort than watching Endangered Species.