The filmmakers put in the long hours needed to capture important moments and they seem to maintain a good rapport with the families and medical staff, but they lack the technical mastery and distance evidenced by Allan King, Peter Walker and Jason Milligan in the superiorly-crafted direct-cinema documentary Dying at Grace. At times A Lion in the House borders uncomfortably on the brink of reality television especially in the camera confessional setups and prodding by the filmmakers which even when edited out can still be detected. Yet overall, A Lion in the House still recommended for its frequent displays of courage, humanity, compassion, and grace.

Recorded on Betacam (1.33:1), A Lion in the House has lifelike colors, but suffers from mild aliasing, blur, and a lack of image detail. These mild issues together with mediocre camera work and a boom mic that frequently drops into the frame are mildly distracting but not to the point of overwhelming the families' stories. The 2.0 DD audio generally sounds fine with nice separation on the score. Some dialogue is less than ideally recorded, but again is not overly distracting here. Unfortunately, no subtitles are offered on this release.

This two-disc release is generously laden with extras including outtakes (12 min.), an interview with filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert (16 min.), a making-of featurette (29 min.), Lions on the Road a 15-minute featurette about the reception of the film, filmmakers bios, and trailers for four other Docudrama releases.

A Lion in the House is available individually or bundled with 11 other feature-length documentaries in the Docudrama Film Festival, Volume 5 box set (MSRP $279.95).