Review by Justin Bateman
UK certification E | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 130 minutes
While Dian Fossey was made a household name by Gorillas in the Mist, the Hollywood film starring Sigourney Weaver, Jane Goodall is probably less well known. However, it's fair to say that her work with chimpanzees is at least as important. Untrained but with a passion for animals in 1960 Goodall went to Gombe National Park in Tanzania, or Tanganyika as it was then known, to study the local chimps.
What followed was a lifelong fascination with these intelligent primates, much of which is documented in the three films in this collection. The first is Among the Wild Chimpanzees which tells the story of Goodall's initial expedition in 1960. Spending a lot of time simply observing the chimps and gaining their trust, she would eventually make the astonishing and groundbreaking discovery that they made and used tools in a similar way to humans.
Chimps on the Edge focuses on a meeting with the President of the Congo to protect further areas of chimpanzee habitat and ensure their survival in a continent where animals of all kinds are regularly slaughtered. Although it doesn't ignore it entirely, the matter of how the poverty-stricken people of the area survive is almost glossed over and there's an interesting scene in which the locals question how the conservationists plan to help them as well as the chimps. The Life and Legend of Jane Goodall provides a summary of the Englishwoman's work over the last half a century with comment and reflection from Goodall herself.
For animal lovers the first film will be the most interesting, dealing as it does with the behaviour of the chimps and showing some excellent footage of Goodall's early days in Tanganyika. The other two films, while interesting are more reportage and tribute than wildlife documentaries per se and as such might disappoint the more hardcore animal lovers. Because the three films were made at different times there's also a disparity in quality and style which leaves it feeling slightly uneven when watched as a triumvirate. Still, this is an important story in primatology and this is more than adequate until Hollywood decide it's time to Dian Fossey-ify Jane Goodall.
EXTRAS None