Review: ‘The Tiger Rising’ is rough around the edges but the big cat’s beautiful

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Like the wooden figures its main character so earnestly whittles, the family adventure-drama “The Tiger Rising” could have used more careful shaping of its many uneven edges.

Writer-director Ray Giarratana, in adapting the 2001 middle-school novel by Kate DiCamillo (“Because of Winn-Dixie”), tosses in a kitchen sink’s worth of cinematic elements — flashbacks, animated bits, flights of fancy and fantasy, dream sequences — to gussy up what is, at heart, a slender tale of learning to surmount one’s grief and anger. It’s more fable than fabulous.

The story finds 10-year-old Rob Horton Jr. (Christian Convery) living in a low-rent, northern Florida motel (shot in Georgia) with his widowed dad (Sam Trammell) after the boy’s beatific mother (Katharine McPhee) dies of cancer. Rob is quiet and circumspect, all “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir,” bullied by a few awful schoolboys and dogged by a psychosomatic — and predictably barometric — leg rash.

Enter Sistine (yes, after the chapel) Bailey (Madalen Mills), an irascible, supremely self-possessed new classmate, who has relocated to the rural area after her parents’ split. She’s mad at the world and that includes Rob, to whom you know she’ll thaw — eventually.

Rob and Sistine bond somewhat (she remains a pretty ornery figure) when Rob introduces her to the Bengal tiger he discovered living caged in the woods. That it’s owned by dark-hearted motel owner — and Rob Sr.’s employer — Beauchamp (Dennis Quaid) complicates matters (but only a bit; remember: fable), though it doesn’t stop Sistine from hectoring the younger Rob to help her set the imposing animal free. But can they?

The tiger in the movie “The Tiger Rising.”

(The Avenue)

The script wields its symbolic hammer so heavily that it tends to smother the story’s more authentic emotions. That is, when it’s not presenting a few too many characters and situations in the broadest of strokes. (Are we truly to believe Beauchamp would secretly hire little Rob to feed the man-eating tiger? What exactly are Beauchamp and Rob Sr. fighting over? Does the school principal really need to have such an awful comb-over?)

In addition, Convery (Netflix series “Sweet Tooth”) and Mills (endearing in 2020’s Netflix musical “Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey”) don’t display the requisite range and nuance here to fully carry and sell such a sensitive, emotionally ambitious story.

Queen Latifah, however, delivers a lovely turn as the motel’s wise and observant housekeeper. (She’s also one of the movie’s executive producers.) Quaid makes an amusing meal out of his loopy, hair-trigger Beauchamp, even if it sometimes feels like he’s acting in a different film. (In the script’s best line, Sistine says of Beauchamp: “He may not be the stupidest man in the world, but I’ll bet he’s related.”)

As for the tiger, played by the 350-pound showbiz veteran Schicka (“The Hangover,” “We Bought a Zoo”), she’s strikingly shot and woven into the action despite her scenes being filmed separately from those of the actors. Too bad the rest of the movie isn’t as captivating as the big, beautiful cat at its center.