Delayed Reaction: Roar

The Pitch: So, we've got a hundred jungle cats, and we are going to have them terrorize a bunch of actors...no, not through camera tricks. We're going to put the actors in the same room as lions.

A family gets trapped in a house with a bunch of lions, tigers, and jaguars. Oh my!

And here I though Free Solo would be the most insane thing I'd watch this year. I forgot that I had this gem waiting in my Netflix queue. Roar belongs in that small subset of movies that I have to watch because I'm not sure how they exist in the first place. Free Solo is one of these due to the likelihood of death. Escape From Tomorrow I'm still surprised Disney didn't decide to crush. Roar is, appropriately enough, the king of all movies that shouldn't exist.

Writer/director/star Noel Marshall and his [at the time] wife, Tippi Hendren and step-daughter, Melanie Griffith, literally play with full sized, untrained lions throughout this movie. Marshall playfully piles on with a group of lions. He steps in between feuding lions. He does all sorts on insane things that should have maimed him. Not surprisingly, this film is notorious for the 70-100 people who were injured on the set. The list of scalpings, cuts, broken bones, and even gangrene is unbelievable. The danger the actors put themselves in would even make Tom Cruise blush.

I spent the first 30 minutes in disbelief of what I was watching. I nervously giggled as Marshall gave speech after speech about how the lions and tigers weren't all that dangerous despite seeing actual footage in the movie of cast members getting injured. That's real blood in the film!

Sadly, the movie is pretty awful. I read that one reviewer described this as a "thrilling bore". That's a perfect description. The thrill, of course, is seeing scene after scene of people essentially cheating death. The bore is that the story, acting, and direction are amateurish. Granted, I wouldn't be concerned about my blocking or line delivery either if my scene partner was a full grown lion. I kind of love the film's score because it's blissfully unaware of the actual stakes. The score is downright playful at times - I'm sure at Marshall's request - despite the fact that it could turn into a snuff film at any second.

My god. People are insane.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend*

*As a film, I can't recommend it, but I kind of think everyone should see it.