There's really not a better feel-good lazy afternoon viewing experience, for me, than a solid nature documentary. And Disneynature has some really fabulous ones on their list. Gorgeous cinematography captured in dramatic fashion, often of exotic and extreme places and beasts, are the purest form of cinema. Moving images that speak for themselves.
Except, more and more often in these Earth Day Disneynature releases, the images do not speak for themselves. Rather, they tend to rely increasingly on narrators to tell their stories and dramatize the events portrayed. This worked flawlessly in the series' first installments, as narrators such as Samuel L. Jackson and Meryl Streep spoke in an omniscient and often poetic voice. With later installments, though, narrators such as Tim Allen and John C. Reilly tended to anthropomorphize their subjects, speaking often in the voice of the animals seen on screen, cheapening the effect of nature's awesome power, and trivializing whatever scientific or environmentalist insights might have otherwise been gleaned.
Penguins, unfortunately, falls deeply into the latter category. Ed Helms, though he often made me chuckle, quickly becomes more distracting than enjoyable. He effectively strips the genuine comedy and intrigue of the story -- here centering on a newly matured male Adelie penguin named Steve -- by his inability to refrain from puke jokes and awkward stream of consciousness. The penguins are cute and awkward enough; surely the cinematography and score could have carried the film without relying on his blathering.
Further, while the visuals are typically stunning, it is occasionally hard to swallow that we've seen most of this before. I'd argue that the 2005 March of the Penguins was really the only documentary about penguins in Antarctica that we ever needed. At least they could have made some valuable and timely statements about climate change and the polar icecaps melting, but even these are glaringly omitted. But, then again, can anyone truly be upset to see more penguins on the big screen? This is a rare case of a film that I'd rather watch than not, but would prefer to mute the sound to avoid the irritating narration.
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