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Young Toomai (Sabu), a skilled elephant handler not only for his age,
dreams of nothing but becoming a hunter, like his father and grandfather
before him - so he's more than thrilled when white elephant hunter
Peterson (Walter Hudd) takes him with him on his latest expedition to the
jungle in search for elephants ... but alas, Peterson can't find any. Toomai
tries to impress the native guides, but earns nothing but ridicule,
especially from Ram Lal (Bruce Gordon), who's little more than a bully,
but his mockery hurts Toomai deeply. Among other things, Ram Lal claims
Toomai will never be a hunter until he has seen the dancing elephants ... Then
Toomai's father (W.E. Holloway), one of Peterson's guides, is killed by a
tiger, and Toomai's elephant is so overcome by grief that he breaks his
chains and severely injures Ram Lal. Ram Lal insists that the elephant
will be killed in return - which breaks Toomai's heart, so he runs away
with his elephant, not knowing that Peterson has already succeeded in
talking ram Lal out of it. Somehow, Toomai's elephant leads him to the
wild elephants that Peterson has been tracking for months now, and Toomai
sees them dance. Peterson has meanwhile organized a search party, and when
he catches up with Toomai, he's happy to not only find the boy but also
plenty of elephants to shoot. From now on, the native guides, including
Ram Lal, accept Toomai as a great hunter. Shot in parts in
India, Elephant Boy is a film that looks properly impressive, and
some of the stuff Sabu can do with an elephant leaves one's mouth agape -
but that said, Elephant Boy is hardly a good film, its story is
feeble, overly clichéed, dragged out (even though the film lasts a meager
78 minutes) and some of the colonialist attitude brought to the story
seems to be outdated even considering when the movie was made.
Furthermore, all the characters are at best two-dimensional, their
conflicts are a bit on the uninteresting side, and there is no real
chemistry to them. And Sabu might seem natural on an elephant and he can
certainly more than live up to the jungle action of the movie ... but he's
hardly an even decent actor. Rather a disappointment - even if it looks
impressive.
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eThaiCD.com
find Elephant Boy at adultvideouniverse.com
