The True Life Adventures series is part of a grouping of
features that Disney put out in the late 1940s/early 1950s that shows the
problems the company had. A company that
was once daring and put out features that challenged existing wisdom was now
churning out product to fill space on distribution schedules. The original True Life Adventure, Seal
Island, won an Oscar, and was somewhat compelling, but by the time we get to
The Olympic Elk, the series has a formula and hesitates to deviate from it
whatsoever.
The focus in The Olympic Elk is the Olympic peninsula in
Washington, and showing the migration of the elk from the lowland valleys to
the snow capped mountains. But it
follows the same basic outline we have seen from the shorts so far: opening
with an animated sequence showing the setting and place, then moving on to a
focus on a particular group of animals before eventually settling into a story
about one particular animal in that group.
That’s not a criticism, as it’s a good way to expose the brilliant
nature photography to the masses, but when you watch several of these shorts,
it becomes very easy to discern director James Algar’s rhythms and go-to ideas.
The story of the elk migrating from the bottom of the
mountains to the tops where they rest is actually an improvement over things
like Nature’s Half Acre, where the story all took place over the course of
seasons but with no movement. Tracking
the movement of the elk up the mountain offers more of a kinetic nature to the
short. As with all the nature films,
though, the problem is the lack of a compelling plot or characters to keep the
audience invested in what happens next.
There is a slight threat to the elk from a black bear
looking to prey on them, but for the most part, the conflict the elk must
overcome is the actual mountain in the way.
The mountain, needless to say, makes a bit less compelling adversary
than a villain like Chernabog or Malieficent.
The good news is that Algar takes care to use the best shots, and
showing the impact of the terrain on the elk and vice versa. It’s a nice snapshot of what these animals go
through, all the way up through the fight over the females between two male
bucks.
I’ve made no bones that the True Life Adventure series is
not my thing. There just isn’t much in
the series that appeals to my desire for strong plot and character
development. That said, The Olympic Elk
is probably the tightest of the shorts to date.
We are quickly introduced to the elk, their migration pattern then
follow it through to the end in a brisk 24 minutes. I wasn’t bored and didn’t find my attention
drifting as much as it had with the other True Life Adventures. It’s a good entry in what I find to be a
subpar series.
Just watched this. I'm watching them in chronological order, from the remastered "Legacy
ReplyDeleteCollection", which nicely packages them all into
4 2-disc sets. Unless I'm mistaken, this is only
the fourth film of the series (after SEAL ISLAND, BEAVER VALLEY, and NATURE'S HALF-ACRE). Your review makes it sound like this is much later in the series, when in actuality they hadn't even done a "full-length" one yet. I think it's an acquired taste, that takes warming up to, because I find myself liking them more as I progress through the series. THanks for the site...