March of the Penguins

We rented the documentary "March of the Penguins" the other night. I had heard lots of good things about it and I quite like penguins, so I was excited to see the film. The beginning credits noted that it was narrated by Morgan Freeman, so that seemed like a good sign. The penguins were very cute and it was sweet to see them with their partners (they are somewhat monogomous, because they stay with their chosen mate for a whole year), but even at a mere 80 minutes running time, it seemed a little long.

The most interesting part of the movie was when the mother penguins brought back food for the father penguins and the chicks (the fathers babysit the chicks with no food for some insane amount of time, like two or three months...I can't remember because I started to zone out during that part) and I asked Aaron if the mother penguins were going to regurgitate the food for the father and the chick. Ewwww, gross, right? Aaron said, "Um, yeah, probably...(long pause for emphasis, turns to me with a look like I'm retarded), because they don't have POCKETS!" This was by far the high point of the whole movie for me.

Overall, I have to say that it just seemed like an extra long nature show that you'd see on PBS. To be fair, I thought maybe it was really hard to shoot since the Emperor Penguin lives in the South Pole, which is basically a huge glacier. So I checked to see if they'd show some cool footage (no pun intended - really!) of them filming the penguins, but even the "making of" extras weren't that great.

I'd say to give it a miss, unless you really like nature documentaries or you're just hell bent on seeing all the movies that have Oscar noms. Sorry, little penguins.