Autumn and the Black Jaguar

Autumn and the Black Jaguar is such an earnest, well-intentioned movie that I almost feel like a bully for telling you it’s not very good. This is the latest effort from filmmaker Gilles de Maistre, whose Mia and the White Lion and The Wolf and the Lion also revolve around girls befriending endangered animal cubs. In fact, he’s more or less made the exact same movie three times and somehow hasn’t gotten any better at it.

The girl this time is Autumn Edison (Lumi Pollack), a 14-year-old who spent several years as a child living with her parents in a village in the Amazon rainforest. That’s where her mother was murdered by poachers. Now she’s in the States with her doctor father Saul (Paul Greene). After stumbling upon a letter from village leader Oré (Wayne Charles Baker) informing Saul that poachers are tracking the now-grown jaguar Autumn bonded with as a child, she decides to sneak halfway around the world to protect her “best friend.” In a thoroughly implausible plot device, Anja (Emily Bett Rickards), the anxiety-ridden biology teacher she frequently clashes with, chases after her. I’m sure that will go over well with the school when she doesn’t show up for work the next day.

You might reasonably assume that the plot will offer excitement as Autumn fights to protect the animal from the bad guys. Autumn and the Black Jaguar doesn’t actually have a plot, though. Instead, the film is a series of scenes in which Autumn and Anja walk through the forest, encounter a snake, sleep in a tree, and float down a river. The poachers do show up to shoot at them briefly, but they are never developed as characters, thereby rendering them non-threatening. The big finale proves to be a total washout because we’re suddenly supposed to be relieved to see these nebulous villains get defeated.

The director’s real goal here is to send a message about protecting endangered animals. To achieve that, he spends a significant amount of time showing Pollack (and Airam Camacho, who portrays Autumn as a child in flashbacks) romping around with the jaguar. Both young actresses spent a year imprinting with real cubs in preparation for the movie. That, unfortunately, is more interesting than anything occurring onscreen. Gilles de Maistre puts more emphasis on the message than he does on crafting a story that will hold anybody’s attention.

Autumn and the Black Jaguar is at its worst when trying to be funny. The screenplay relies on overly broad humor that seems ripped out of a ‘70s sitcom. Anja’s anxiety is often played for laughs. That’s not inherently funny, nor is Rickards, who gives a shrill, shreiky performance that quickly got on my nerves. Her job is to run around in a panic for an hour-and-a-half, screaming and flailing her arms. A select few performers could do that without seeming repetitive. Rickards is not one of them. Am I terrible for saying I kept hoping the jaguar would eat Anja?

Again, the movie wants so badly to be a magical animal-based adventure for kids and to impart a serious message about wildlife preservation. Were it remotely well-made, I might have been tempted to cut it some slack. But the whole thing lacks imagination, emotion, and fun, so that just isn’t possible. Even the least discerning of kid viewers is likely to grow bored long before the end credits arrive.


out of four

Autumn and the Black Jaguar is rated PG for thematic material, violent content, peril, and some language. The running time is 1 hour and 40 minutes.


© 2025 Mike McGranaghan