YMMV / Born Free

• Awesome Music: Quite possibly John Barry's greatest score until Dances with Wolves.
  • The opening theme is incredibly majestic.
  • "Elsa at Play" is a suitably jaunty and cute piece, perfect to accompany the montage of Elsa and her sisters growing up.
  • "Fight of the Lioness," which plays before the final battle itself, is bombastic, suspenseful, and epic all at once.
  • The song "Born Free" itself, naturally; of course, some might find the single version's arrangement a little too bouncy for the tone of the film, and prefer the grand, sweeping arrangement of the film performance, but whichever version you listen to, Matt Monro's voice is just beautiful.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: The popular song "Born Free" was originally written for and featured in this movie; it won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and it's been covered and parodied quite a bit. While the movie isn't completely forgotten, these days, people are more likely to have heard of the song first.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The opening scene. A group of local women are cheerfully chatting while doing their laundry in the river, unaware that a lion is lying in wait for the moment when he can catch one of them alone. When the moment comes, the poor woman (who had arrived later than the others and is therefore still working after her fellows have left) doesn't stand a chance.
  • The climactic fight between Elsa and a wild lioness counts, too. It gets so intense, Joy has to fire off George's rifle into the air to break it up, so that Elsa doesn't get killed.
• Sequelitis: The film has a 1972 sequel entitled Living Free (which, despite the title, is actually based on Forever Free, the last chapter of the Elsa saga), but, in contrast to the original, it was not particularly well-received, with critics commenting that the script and the acting left something to be desired, as well as that it generally felt like a rehash of the original; the film remains largely obscure as a result.
• Tear Jerker: Joy watching Elsa walk away at the end. She's successfully accomplished what she's set out to do, but she also knows that her own relationship with Elsa is forever changed by this transition, not to mention that it's possible this will be the last time she ever sees Elsa (although this eventually turns out not to be the case).

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