Roar (1981)

Who payed the critics

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Roar, is a film that certainly has to be seen to be believed. The film has brought upon itself many a curious viewer and with it's theatrical re-release in 2015, the film was being billed and sold on the very fact that everything you see on the screen before you is real, and while no animals were hurt during the filming of it, many cast and crew members were and it ultimately proved to be a timely and in other words, a disastrous film shoot. The premise is simple enough about a man living in the wild amongst many lions, tigers and various forms of other wildlife. This man considers these animals to be his friends and will snuggle up to them, play with them and treat them as you would any domesticated pet, like say a dog or cat, except in this case, these were real live animals and basically if you pulled a wrong move, both your character and the actor portraying them could suffer serious injuries if not be killed. For the first little while as I was watching this man treating these wild animals like everyday pets, I thought to myself that he must be insane and no matter how much you love, or respect animals, there certainly has to be boundaries that need not be crossed and this guy did not just cross those lines, but they never seemed to occur to him in the first place. That is where some of the interest, or should I say intrigue comes from while watching the film, Roar. Because it is well documented that many of these cast members as well as the crew suffered serious injuries while filming this, it brings a certain element of danger as well as suspense as you watch not only the more peaceful interactions with the animals, but also when the animals start to turn and even though the film is PG rated and there is no copious amounts of violence or gore, you still truly have a sense of fear and dread with what these actors must have gone through during the course of what must have been a draining and terrifying shoot. The film has been dubbed by some in the film world as a cross between watching Swiss Family Robinson meets watching a snuff film, and while you certainly don't witness anyone actually being killed, and nobody actually died during the film as to the knowledge I have read of it, it still gives the film the feel of watching an underground film, or even something like the Mondo Cane films that were popular amongst certain groups in the 60's and 70's because everything you watch is real and it gives the film almost a documentary type cinema verite kind of look and style. As, I mentioned earlier, sometimes you actually fear for the lives of these characters and the safety of the actors portraying them for this very reason and I think most likely no matter how big of an animal lover you are, nobody would really want a whole den of lions living and roaming around free in their house. Agreed? The film was certainly a labour of love for star, writer and director Noel Marshall, who also got his real life family including wife Tippi Hedren and daughter Melanie Griffith, to also star in the film. You would think after an unpleasant film experience as Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, that Hedren might want to stay away from working with real animals, but that was not the case here. Roar, is sometimes unintentionally hilarious as some of the antics of the animals on screen prove to be cute at some moments and at other times quite amusing. The acting in the film is really nothing award worthy in any way and when there is real life danger on the set, sometimes you laugh in spite of yourself for the absolute foolishness for these people putting themselves in harm's way and it sometimes backfiring on them. All the same, all these qualities make Roar to be an absolutely fascinating film to watch and it also proves to be quite fun at times as well. Think of an 80's version of Jurassic Park, or even Jaws. The audience I was in the theatre with also laughed along with much of the film and I am certain nobody could have called it a boring, or uninteresting experience. As for the film it does show light upon people placing more importance on animals than human life itself which while you think about it, the whole thing becomes kind of ironic after watching the film, but it is still nonetheless interesting and worth seeking out for anyone curious about anything I mentioned above, or just for a definitely unique viewing experience as this film certainly was. I would definitely be interested in knowing what the film's screenplay was actually like because as stated earlier in the film, the real life actions of the animal costars really wrote and dictated the film, so rightly they got credit where the credit was due.

Warning: Spoilers... for a movie that's 45 years old.I just watched a copy of this for the first time. It's pretty insane. I was left wondering why they made up a violent storyline instead of just showing the big cats among a family in a peaceful setting. I know a film can't be about the land of the happy people, but those cats are scary when they aren't fighting. 14 year-old Melanie Griffith has a scene where the blood has drained from her face and her lips are grey. You can tell that she really was terrified, not just acting. It is a movie with sheer terror mixed with enough absurdity to make you laugh in parts. The elephants in the film were my favorite to watch. They were the only elephants I've ever seen that I thought were scary. And by the time the family meets up with them, I couldn't help but cheer as one tears their boat out from under them and rips it apart. I wish this had gone the same way as Uly's 'Gods Must Be Crazy' though. That was a far superior film. It's a shame the concept for this was just plain stupid. i still highly recommend watching it. The bonus documentary is also worth seeing. Tippi Hedren's extremely candid comments left me speechless. Nothing gets more real than that.

What did I just watch? Adventure, horror, thriller? Well, it's all true. First they thought to make an adventure, but the script wasn't really working, most of the lion scenes were pure improvisation, and after it turned out to be a horror-thriller, not because you are afraid for the characters but for the actors themselves. I have never seen a movie where actors were so afraid but had to act as if they aren't. But you have to give them credit for the courage.Considering that the movie was mostly improvised mess, editing was done OK, still pretty bad by normal standards. They probably did a tone of b-tape, and it worked, seems a bit clunky, lots of added voices and sounds, lots of cutting in the middle of action, but still a decent job with material they had. Script is almost non existent, story is as simple as it gets: family came to visit their father, who lives with ferocious animals. And there is a side story, I don't know why they put that in the movie, it makes no sense and leads to nowhere, I guess it was because they wanted to involve characters from the beginning that had an awesome fight with the lions which was probably not even supposed to happen, but they kept on rolling (bandages on them throughout the movie are probably real). The most amazing scene was when the main actor comes running towards 4-5 lions and starts fighting them, they filmed that scene first, probably because if he got killed they could just say screw it we are canceling the production. You can tell that because even in the scenes before the fight the main character has a bandage on his hand that he hurt when fighting the lions.Most of the movie is characters running scared from the lions and lions run around in the surroundings lions normally aren't in. It is portrayed as something normal to live with a bunch of animals, but it's hard for audience to believe that because in just one day that tigers and lions lived in the house, they wrecked the bloody house to shreds. 4/10 just because the actors survived. What is next? "Hissss" an adventure in a beautiful eden with cobras.

Wow. I never knew pussy could be both scary and inviting at the same time. What a whack movie. I'm writing this before I do any (further) research on it so that it's my genuine opinion. But, from what I barely heard or remember or WHAT THE POSTER BLATANTLY SAYS, many people got hurt in the making of this film. Not that I want that to happen, it sounds like the making of this movie would be far more interesting. In fact, bring on the feature-length doc and I will buy advance tickets!The movie sincerely starts off scary. And I am not kidding. Sure there's some bad acting, terrible ADR and the distracting character name of Melanie played by Melanie Griffith, but the idea of pitting humans amongst MANY ferocious carnivores, I kept expecting the worst to happen. But then, that was all in the first third. Then the real "movie," began and it was terribly hard to determine if this was intentionally funny or the number one most unintentional comedy of all time. Personally, I love movies that are unintentionally hilarious like Birdemic: Shock and Terror, The Room and Twilight. But, this one had me puzzled since it seemed dead serious and suspenseful at times, but then had corky (corny?) music and so many Benny Hill chase scenes.Basically, most of a family tries to reunite with the father in Africa who had befriended many large and diverse cats. While he's goofily trying to get to his family, they spend a good chunk of the film running away from the cats in the dad's house made of cardboard that contains probably around 600 rooms. Again, what started off scary turns goofy and absurdly incoherent and then, sorry, spoiler, ends with the most "Can't We All Get Along" song and message. Once I finish writing this, I can't wait to learn more about the background to this movie. As I restate the movie poster's fantastic tagline: "No animals were harmed in the making of this film. 70 cast and crew members were." I am yearning to hear more about the behind-the-scream issues. For one thing, I could not believe that the animals wouldn't turn on or even accidentally hurt, seriously maim or kill someone. There were just too many of them who all stayed in one small area, hardly hunted at all…and they had to be hungry. But, that, again, is background information. This review is based on the movie I saw. And it's terrible, sadly, because it could've been more suspenseful and thrilling had they kept to one tone and had a much lower number of the unbelievably "playful" lions, tigers and elephants. Oh, myyy.***Final thoughts: That all said, I do love me some When Animals Attack movies. Mostly the realistic animal ones such as sharks, ants, spiders, birds, piranha and even these cats. When they're all genetically mutated or, ah-hem, ROAR like the shark in Jaws: The Revenge, it's just silly and I'm less frightened since it couldn't happen. But, like I said, When Animals Attack and they're normal sized beasts… I'm having a blast by being scared. For the most part, anyways…Sorry, cast and crew of Roar. You got hurt for such a failed product.