Word: cheetahs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Directors Kevin Lima and Chris Buck, writers Tab Murphy, Bob Tzudiker and Noni White and the myriad artists at their command have taken the familiar Tarzan iconography--vine swinging, Jane, Cheetah, the jungle yodel--then freshened or deepened it. This ape-man (animated by Glen Keane and voiced by Tony Goldwyn) is no longer a swinger; he rides the twisting highways of tree boughs like the coolest surfer. (Alert, all Disney park ride designers: have the Tarzan Twist ready by next spring...
What can be done with Cheetah? Replace that nattering chimp with gorillas who are all too human. This is a film about parenting, about the pain and triumph of racial or social assimilation. Kala is a loving adoptive mother, her concern for the boy complicated by the loss of her own child and the knowledge that his difference, when he finally does understand it, may force him from her. To Kerchak, Tarzan is a threat: a wiser form of machismo. And to the brash young Terk (Rosie O'Donnell), Tarzan is just another playmate--weird...
Among the animals that died were four cheetah cubs, two hippos and two rhinos. The causes of their demise ranged from heart attack to kidney failure, the latter possibly brought on by ethylene glycol, the main ingredient in antifreeze. Two otters also died, one after gorging itself on seeds from nearby loquat trees. Disney has uprooted the trees and removed them from the habitat...
...much for the cynicism. It evaporates about 30 seconds after the house lights dim and director Julie Taymor's menagerie starts appearing on the stage and in the aisles. A pair of spindly giraffes (with men on stilts hidden inside) parade regally in front of a golden sun. A cheetah prowls the stage, manipulated by a fully visible actor as if she were pushing an anthropomorphic wheelbarrow. Birds "fly" on the end of a pole waved around like a kite, while a huge elephant galumphs down the aisle. As they converge to the strains of Circle of Life...
...going to be a cheetah," said Reggie, age five. "No, no, I want to be a golden cheetah...