Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.


I'll admit to being more than a little confused by the existence of this elegant and breathtaking nature documentary released under Disney's new Disneynature imprint. Not that there's anything inherently boggling about the film itself, but my point of confusion comes from the fact that I'd seen a great deal of the footage before as part of the groundbreaking, multipart "Plant Earth" series on the Discovery Channel a couple of years back. Still, serving as a sort of a Greatest Hits package, EARTH has one very important thing going for it that the television series did not have--it gives us the chance to view these staggeringly beautiful images on the big screen, and you need to take full advantage of the opportunity to do so.

As narrated by James Earl Jones in the States and Patrick Stewart in the UK (for you completists, the series was narrated by Sigourney Weaver in the U.S. and renowned wildlife expert David Attenborough in the UK), EARTH streamlines three of the remarkable stories from "Planet Earth" and fleshes them out with other incredible footage from around the globe of rare animals and natural phenomenon, all shot with the most modern camera equipment available. Yes, messages about conservation, global warming, melting ice caps, endangered species, the destruction of the rain forests and holes in the ozone layer all find their way into the film, but when you watch a fully grown polar bear starving to death because the ice he normally walks upon to find food is melting under his feet, the message kind of screams out whether the narrator says something or not. Parents should be warned that, although the editors do a decent job keeping the really bloody stuff off the screen, there are some pretty scary and deadly moments captured here. Watching a great white shark jump completely out of the water while swallowing a grown seal whole might be a bit much for young children to handle.

The first story involves a polar bear family--the father separated while looking for food, while the mother and two adorable cubs emerge from hibernation in search of their own source of nutrition. This portion of the film is the most difficult to watch simply because watching these creatures adapt to their changing environment is troubling. The second story follows a herd of African elephants making the long journey to find a massive watering hole that only fills up at certain times of the year. One particularly tense moment comes when a group of lions goes after some of the younger, smaller elephants. The third sequence is perhaps the most serene and humbling, as we journey with a pair of humpback whales as they travel 4,000 miles to a feeding ground in the Antarctica. Their journey doesn't seem quite as treacherous (other than when they swim through powerful storms), but that doesn't make watching them any less spectacular.

The films frequently diverts from the three main stories just to show us something cool, and there's nothing wrong with that. Since I'm guessing that the overall point of the Disneynature films is to get kids interested in protecting the planet and the environment and awesome animals in general, I really didn't mind the way EARTH jumped around quite a bit, often sacrificing a cohesive narrative for images that are almost more than the eyes can take in. And while for some of us, the footage might be a bit of a rehash, I was pleased to see a trailer for Disneynature's 2010 offering, OCEANS, which seems to be all-new footage. The film isn't nearly as thorough and detail-oriented as the series or even something like MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, but at least Jones' narration isn't as pandering as, say, Queen Latifah's was in 2007's ARCTIC TALE. More importantly, I just like the idea that every year we'll be getting a new, feature-length nature documentary to see on the big screen. I grew up watching "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" and the original Disney nature shorts that Uncle Walt himself used to introduce and sometimes narrate. Directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield have pieced together something that is magnificent, but more importantly they've produced a film that was destined for the big screen even if it was made for television. Even if you aren't much of a documentary person, EARTH is something quite unique, and if you have children, you pretty much need to take them to see this. The kids in the audience that I saw this movie with were mesmerized for the duration. You'll love this film.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com