"March of the Penguins (La Marche de l'empereur)" is a pretty National Geographic nature film. The visuals are lovely, but there is little science.
The English-language narration by a nicely dry Morgan Freeman, adding more richness than his tone in his "War of the Worlds" voice-over cameo, avoids any mention of evolution and wincingly anthropomorphizes procreative instincts into romantic relationships.
But the nesting habits of penguins are an incredible, irresistibly involving tale, almost Ripley's Believe It or Not, to get to see - and doubtless filming it was too, though I presume we'll only get the photographers' tale on the DVD.
The harsh realities of nature are shown frankly enough, even though edited to avoid a PG rating, that a toddler in the audience yelled out at a predator bird "Go away!" and declaim this as a "bad show" when it didn't listen to her plea.
The music is a bit corny.
It was very ironic that this was playing in NYC in an art house theater where the adjacent screen was showing "9 Songs" restricted for 18 years+ tale of another male in Antarctica with sex on his mind.
The English-language narration by a nicely dry Morgan Freeman, adding more richness than his tone in his "War of the Worlds" voice-over cameo, avoids any mention of evolution and wincingly anthropomorphizes procreative instincts into romantic relationships.
But the nesting habits of penguins are an incredible, irresistibly involving tale, almost Ripley's Believe It or Not, to get to see - and doubtless filming it was too, though I presume we'll only get the photographers' tale on the DVD.
The harsh realities of nature are shown frankly enough, even though edited to avoid a PG rating, that a toddler in the audience yelled out at a predator bird "Go away!" and declaim this as a "bad show" when it didn't listen to her plea.
The music is a bit corny.
It was very ironic that this was playing in NYC in an art house theater where the adjacent screen was showing "9 Songs" restricted for 18 years+ tale of another male in Antarctica with sex on his mind.