Film Review: “The Elephant in the Living Room”

Membership Ticker

Please don’t miss this chance

We’ve been offered a $50,000 digital matching gift by a generous board member, and we need your help to make sure we get every dollar of it. Any donation you make online this month will be matched dollar-for-dollar. You know the stakes in this all-important election season. And the fearless, kickass, truth-telling reporting Americans need doesn’t pay for itself. Please chip in right now with any amount if you can.

Nightfly Entertainment

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Elephant in the Living Room

NIGHTFLY ENTERTAINMENT

95 minutes

Don’t be misled: The only animals you’ll see in a living room in this doc are a cougar and a Burmese python. (The runaway—slitheraway?— Gabon viper is nabbed in a garage.) Director Michael Webber‘s fast-moving, bittersweet film reveals a world of dangerous and entirely unregulated pets (lions, tigers, bears) raised behind closed doors. Much of the action takes place in suburban Ohio, a state that rivals parts of Florida for nuisance alligators. Hidden cameras rolling, we attend a reptile show where dads cart off snakes that could devour their offspring. But the real drama lies in the interplay between a passionate cop who moonlights as an exotic-animal rescuer and a sympathetic sadsack who can’t bear to part with his full-grown African lions. The cat owner’s tear-jerking travails drive home the filmmaker’s point better than any finger-wagging activist ever could.