Carroll Ballard's Duma is the best picture from 2005 you probably didn't get an opportunity to see. Not because you didn't go, mind you, but because Warner Bros. decided this small, nature-driven film by the director of The Black Stallion, Never Cry Wolf and Fly Away Home (all family classics) wasn't fit for a widespread theatrical release. While getting rave reviews (NEW TORK TIMES critic Manohla Dargis called it "soulful" and "piercingly beautiful," while Roger Ebert – he of the ubiquitous thumbs – found it to be an "extraordinary film" giving it 3 ½ stars in his CHICAGO SUN TIMES review) the studio barely released it, relegating the picture to a few second-tier art houses only the precious few hear know about.

Too bad, because Ebert and Dargis (and, according to the good people at Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of all the other critics who saw it) were right, Duma is both "beautiful," so much so it pierces your heart, and "extraordinary," so wondrous it lifts the spirits and touches the soul as only a truly great movie can. This is something all families can revel in, a piece of timeless beauty so intelligently crafted and made with such rapturous flair viewers of all ages are guaranteed to find its many glories enthralling them into blissful submission.

Based on the novel/memoir How It Was with Dooms by Xan and Carol Cawthra Hopcraft, this loose adaptation follows young Xan (newcomer Alexander Michaletos, simply wonderful) as he tries to return his pet Cheetah named Duma back to the South African wilds. It is a simple story, nothing more than a boy and his cheetah stuck in the wilds while the child's mother (a touchingly forceful Hope Davis, reuniting splendidly with her Secret Lives of Dentists costar Campbell Scott) desperately does all she can to bring him back home. That's it, nothing more, the screenplay a model of delicate and moving efficiency.

What makes the film so phenomenal isn't the story, the characters or the situations facing them, but instead the breathless visual imagination and ingenuity Ballard and freshman cinematographer Werner Maritz bring to the proceedings. The director does these kinds of tales better than any other director today, crafting intelligently plotted and breathlessly entertaining family adventures sure to stand the test of time. While this one is a bit thinner than usual (Scott disappears so fast and the family moves into the big city so quickly if you go to the bathroom without pressing pause you'll miss both events) it is still such an emotionally exhilarating enterprise I really couldn't have cared less.

Warner Bros. is releasing the film in both Full Screen and Widescreen (1.85:1) presentations, but why a person would even remotely want to bother with the former is way beyond my understanding. The visual panoramas of the African desert, the images of Duma racing gracefully across the screen, the beauteous naturalism of the images is what makes this film such an unmitigated delight. Cropping the picture down into poorly constructed pan and scan images would be a disaster, a person viewing them in that fashion simply wasting their precious time. The film's theatrical trailer and a couple of (nice, if unexceptional) extended scenes are also included.

Family movies do not get better than this one. Had I been able to catch it in a theater it would have been one of my top ten films of 2005. It is a masterful picture, one sure to delight viewers of any age (although parents should take note, like most of Ballard's films there are one or two moments of intensity that could scare those under seven or so) and is a soaring testament to the power of the human spirit. Plainly put, Duma is a masterpiece.