Watching a Kid Boss Around Lions: Going Places with Lowell Thomas #12

Is this for you?

If you enjoy watching old-school newsreel vibes or just have a weird soft spot for archival footage, you’ll probably find this entertaining. If you’re looking for a plot, look elsewhere. You will likely hate this if you get bored by static shots of gardens or, you know, lions just kind of sitting there looking confused.

There is this one moment where a chubby school kid is out there in the ring with a pride of lions. It’s honestly bizarre. He acts like he’s running the show, and the cats just… go along with it? It’s got that same frantic energy you find in Step on It! where everything is moving just a little too fast to really process.

Then, the movie just pivots. We’re suddenly in Rockefeller Center looking at flowers. It’s a jarring shift in tone. One minute you’re worried about a kid getting eaten, the next you’re learning about botany. It’s not exactly the smooth storytelling you’d see in something like Barro Humano, but that’s the charm of these old shorts, right? They don't care if you're keeping up.

The Mexico City shots are pretty, I guess, but they feel like they were tacked on because they had extra film to burn. Lowell Thomas has that classic, booming narrator voice that sounds like it’s being piped in from another planet. It’s all very polite and slightly detached, which is a nice contrast to the kid yelling commands at a bunch of apex predators. 🦁

There’s really no deep meaning here. It’s just stuff happening in front of a camera. Sometimes that’s enough. It’s definitely more interesting than the stiff acting you find in some of those 1920s melodramas like The Claw, which try way too hard to make you feel things.

Quick thoughts from my notebook:

• The lions looked like they were waiting for their lunch break.
• The transition to the Rockefeller gardens was probably the clunkiest edit I’ve seen this month.
• Lowell Thomas sounds like he’s reading the morning paper to a ghost.
• I still can't get over how casual that kid was. Like, dude, you're with lions!

Honestly, it’s a weird little artifact. If you've got ten minutes to kill and want to feel like you're watching a dusty reel in a basement somewhere, this fits the bill. It's not great, but it's definitely memorable.