My review was written in July 1983 after viewing on tv via HBO.
Lensed in the spring of 1979 and MPAA rated two years later, "The White Lions" is a mild family picture which failed to get domestic theatrical distribution and is currently providing pleasant tv diversion.
With educational value for the younger set, picture toplines Michael York as real-life naturalist Chris McBride, who with wife and daughter in tow returns to an African wildlife preserve where he was born, to study animal behavior. Easy-going narrative (with York voicing over lots of background material about lions and their habits) is short on conflict, the main issue being wife Jeanie (Glynnis O'Connor) wishing to go back to the U. S. and resume a normal, academic family life.
Ultimately she comes around and serves as still photographer, accepting McBride's dictum: "We gave up the creature comforts and gained the creatures". When they discover a cute pair of white-colored (but not albino) lion cubs, argument is between the femmes' desire to help them survive versus McBride's hard stance of non-interference. Da finally compromises (while maintaining a firm opposition to zoos) but the cubs' fate is hinted at by a heme song nicely sung by Maureen McGovern: "Enough to Let Me Go".
Lead thesps give earnest performances, with York balancing the preachy demands of his role adroitly and O'Connor a sympathetic helpmate/adversary. A corny subplot has Donald Moffat as a poacher aiming to exploit the cubs.
Wildlife photography is attractive but unexciting, with not enough integration of the actors and animal subjects (reflecting the dichotomy between second unit African lensing and principal filming at a Texas wildlife park).
Commercially, though wilderness adventure pictures have had a big family audience traditional British entries in the "Born Free" tradition such as "Living Free" and "The Belstone Fox" have not made a boxoffice dent Stateside, marking "White Lions as mainly of ancillary interest.
