Movie Review: 'The Wolf and the Lion' Harmless Family Movie Product

The Wolf and the Lion is a harmless trifle, a modestly charming family movie with zero edge and occasionally baffling continuity. The heart of the filmmakers is mostly in the right place but you can sense the marketing strings being pulled and tears being jerked with excessive force. Based on the true story of a real life friendship between a baby wolf and baby tiger who grew up together on a Canadian island, The Wolf and the Lion is inelegant but harmless.

The Wolf and the Lion stars Molly Kunz as Alma, a piano prodigy dealing with the loss of a beloved family member. Alma’s kooky granddad owns an island on the coast of Canada where he worked to protect local wildlife from hunters and other human incursions. Granddad passed away and has left his island to his granddaughter in hope that she will keep up his conservation efforts for the local wildlife.

This includes a rare white wolf, much coveted by scientists and hunters alike. The white wolf is pregnant and will soon bring its offspring back to Alma’s grandpa's cabin. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Alma, a plane has crashed on the island on its way to deliver a rare tiger to a circus. The tiger survived the crash and literally falls into Alma’s lap when she finds the crash site and the tiger is trapped in a tree.

Part of the oddity of The Wolf and the Lion, an example of how lazy and slapdash the film is, Alma responds to the site of a plane crash on her island as if she stumbled over a downed tree. Any illusion that Alma is an actual human being and not a function of an idiot plot goes out the window when she observes the plane crash site with all of the concern and surprise of your average sociopath. This plane had a pilot whose corpse is likely somewhere in that wreckage and his fate is never addressed by anyone.

The plane crash is resolved with a couple lines of dialogue a few scenes later but not because Alma called anyone to report it. In fact, Alma does call her grandpa’s best friend, Joe (Graham Greene), but not to tell him that a plane crashed on her island but rather to tell him that she found a lion and a wolf has given birth on the floor of her cabin. Now, those are notable elements of this story, but it’s odd not to mention the PLANE CRASH on her personal island and the likely rotting corpse of a pilot somewhere in the wreckage.

I know that I am harping on this but even the conservation officers whom the movie uses to briefly address the plane crash seem entirely unconcerned about the crash. When they are noticeably ADR’d into talking to Alma about the crash it is merely to ask if she’d found a tiger at the crash site. Again, that’s a reasonable question but it seems that might be secondary to the dead body likely inside that wreckage that may or may not ever be recovered.

That’s part of a general lack of care in how this story is told. It seems very clear that the filmmakers behind The Wolf and the Lion have little passion for this story. This is what the industry used to call a ‘programmer,’ a movie made as a pure product to fill a space in the market. The point is to put cute animals on screen and get parents to bring their kids who may or may not care what is on the screen other than the moments when the lion and the wolf are being cute or acting human.

I could belabor the point of how slapdash this is by talking about Alma’s bizarre backstory that exists to fill time but I don’t see the point. The Wolf and the Lion is barely a movie. It’s a series of glued together pieces hung on the bones of a true story that would make a heartwarming TikTok video but isn’t particularly compelling when stretched to feature length. Nevertheless, small children might be mildly entertained, parents won’t be offended or interrupted from reading on their phone while the screen babysits the kids and that’s all that anyone behind The Wolf and the Lion is looking for.

The Wolf and the Lion will arrive in theaters nationwide on Friday, February 4th.