Ailo's Journey: Film Review

Ailo's Journey: Film Review

Director: Guillaume Maidatchevsky

This live-action tale of a baby reindeer making its way through the Lapland countryside as he struggles into life is a sure-fire Christmas winner.

Director Maidatchevsky makes great fist of the stunning countryside vistas in this story of life, and layers some hints of climate change, and moments of menace that almost feel like they're ripped from a Disney movie involving Bambi, as the mother and son start their migration.

But the story's more a frolicking rather than rolicking ride through the wilds, and even though the locales soar, there's a feeling that the script has been tailored to fit the action as the camera follows Ailo on his journey.

Lashed with avuncular narration from Donald Sutherland, it never quite hits the highs of an Attenborough led doco, but there's enough distractions to keep the young cooing and cowering throughout.

From a hyperactive white stoat to a wolverine that's got food on its mind, the film's less interested in showing the nastier side of the circle of life (something that many wildlife pieces shy disappointingly away from these days) and more concerned with the cutesy feel. It's of a generation hardly furnished these days, and is more interested in letting the cameras follow the story, and occasionally manufacturing some of the drama needed.

There are certainly wider and deeper points to be made about the effects on migrating herds, and how life is getting tougher for our planet's most under threat animals, but Ailo's Journey is more concerned with planting the seed of thought in minds than spelling it out.

Ailo's Journey is a masterpiece of editing; crisply shot scenes meld with the story, and even though in parts the voiceover feels dreadfully scripted and more interested in a once over when it comes to climate change issues, the film's gleefully uncynical approach, coupled with the magical hitherto unseen world of the Christmas reindeer, may win over more family filled audiences than cynics.