A short, painless family pleaser
By TOM MEEK | April 7, 2011
This short, painless family pleaser, available in IMAX 3D, not only promotes the wisdom of environmental conservation but also shows how people can learn from other creatures on the planet. David Lickley's Born Free–lite documentary jumps between an orangutan orphanage in Borneo and a ranch for motherless elephant calves in Africa. Two Western-educated women — Birute Galdikas and Daphne Sheldrick — have run these establishments for decades with a jocular, nurturing style worthy of Jane Goodall. Loggers and poachers threaten the endangered species, but the film doesn't focus on the negative as much as on the positive efforts to reintroduce the mature offspring back into their natural habitat. These areas are shrinking disastrously, another issue among several that Lickley does not fully address. But the spectacle of 3D and the narration of Morgan Freeman make clear the beauty of what is being lost.
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