Monday, June 1, 2009

Movie Review - Earth

When Disney meets Mother Nature it's the unsuspecting viewer who's caught in the crossfire. Despite a trailer featuring exquisite glimpses of waterfalls, baby animals and flocks of birds in flight, this documentary falls prey to the anthropomorphic curse so common to nature films. It seems that even such amazing creatures as whales, elephants and polar bears can only be fascinating to audiences when placed in the context of the human nuclear family model. The film focuses on a herd of elephants crossing hostile terrain in search of water, a whale and her baby traversing stormy seas and a polar bear with two cubs foraging for food. Their stories are engrossing but a forced sense of drama continually sabotages the action. Yes, life is grim for earth's beautiful creatures and Mother Nature is cruel, but these points are made so relentlessly that several scenes became unwatchable for me. Do we really need to see a group of lions clinging onto a frantic elephant? Or a starving polar bear desperately trying to bring down a walrus? I found myself literally looking away from the screen far too often during this film and wondered how the many children in the audience might be reacting to such harsh images.


"Earth" purports to be a celebration of life on our planet. Perhaps it is, though simply following the animals during their migrations might have been just as effective as presenting one disturbing incident after another. An effective narration by the great James Earl Jones works wonders for the somewhat pedestrian script. There are many marvelous sights to be found in this film: arctic landscapes, vast open plains, baby ducks leaping from a tree for their first flight. I only wish the filmmakers had told their story in a more natural, less brutal way.

Things to love about this movie: Underwater footage of a mother and baby whale; marvelous photography featuring a wide range of creatures including lynx, ducks, antelope and cheetah
Things to hate about this movie: Truly disturbing, drawn out scenes of slaughter; the sight of an exhausted, starving polar bear who simply lays down to die (an unforgettable image I wish I'd never seen); many of the fabulous places shown in the documentary are never identified
Pleasant surprises: A baby elephant swimming; a fun segment (shown over the ending credits) of the photographers setting up their shots
Unpleasant surprises: Too much cutesy script with too little solid information about the animals

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