Google tells me there are seventeen (17!) species of Penguins. Oh hot diggity. That will probably keep me flush with penguin nature documentaries until I die. No, please, tell me more about these guys. I have not learned enough.
How does this Disney Nature documentary selection cycle go, anyway?
“Who’s turn is it?”
“Bears?”
“No, we did Bears remember.”
“Frogs?”
“HAHAHA! Frogs?! Pfft. Get the Hell outta here with that”**
“No, it’s time for another round of B&W.”
“NO!”
“Yes, it is. Let’s go to the wheel.”
(A minor executive pulls out a big wheel of B&W animals. The wheel has exactly four wedges. After arguing over whose turn it is to spin, the most senior person in the room assumes the job.)
“Looks like … Zebras!”
“No!”
“Noooo!”
“Oh, no; nobody cares about zebras.”
“Fine, spin again; but you’re really mocking the idea of a wheel” (Spins again)
“And … Orcas!”
“Awwww. I love that.”
“Wait. Wait. We can’t do Orcas.”
“Why not?”
“Blackfish. Still too soon.”
“Arrrgh. Look, why do we even have a wheel if two of the choices are bogus?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s just do Penguins again.”
Then, of course, another discussion begins:
“Fine. How many penguin documentary teams are out there?”
“57”
“How many of those were able to track their Penguins successfully?”
“32”
“And how many of those aren’t just saying they were able to track their Penguins successfully and can really tell one penguin from another?”
“14”
“Are there any where the protagonist hasn’t been eaten by a larger predator?”
“5”
“And how many of the five made it to 90 minutes of usable footage?”
“None”
“Ok. What was the longest so far?”
“Adélie penguins. 76 minutes.”
“Is it missing anything major?”
“The entire winter portion of the cycle.”
“But they’re in water all that time, right?”
“Yup.”
“We can live with that omission. Adélie it is. Now go hire a B-list comic celebrity to narrate the thing.”
And that’s how (I imagine) Disney ended up with their 2019 Earth Day nature documentary offering: Penguins, as hosted by Ed Helms.
Steve the penguin is the mark. Showing the natural grace of the species, Steve trips on water about every ten steps. These things honestly walk halfway through Antarctica after they surface? How? Why? Oh yeah, mating. Everything is about the mating with these guys.
I’d like to point out right now that in addition to a number of mood-inspired instrumentals, Penguins added cheesy-pop at certain moments in the narrative. For instance, during the mating season, the movie played “I Can’t Fight this Feeling” and when Steve started getting a nest ready, the movie opted for “I’ve Got Work to Do.” What stopped production from adding “(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles” is anyone’s guess; it’s not like The Proclaimers can’t be had cheap these days.
If you’ve seen March of the Penguins, you’ve seen most of Penguins. Second verse, same as the first. Every spring the Adélies, like Emperor Penguins, climb out of the ocean and awkwardly march their tiny feet inland for miles and miles and miles all for some rocky choice nesting ground they share with a zillion other Adélies and a predator or two. The object is to breed and vomit up enough nourishment so the young’uns will survive the race to the ocean eight weeks later. And they’re always on the clock, cuz once the bad weather sets in, the kids are screwed.
Lucky for us, Steve has the sense of directions God gives to most any three-year-old child. This guy spent half the film lost. In fact, the camera was able to isolate him because he’s clearly days behind his fellow Adélies. I know this thing is edited like “The Amazing Race” for added suspense and deliberately misleading perception, but it wasn’t hard to find amusing the part where Steve –while looking for his species, runs into a colony of Emperor Penguins. Well, it wasn’t hard at first, but then Ed Helms started telling jokes about the milieu, and then I found it very easy not to be amused.
Penguins documents the lifecycle of the Adélie, well, the summer portion of it, at least. The things are so awkward and cacophonous, I can’t decide which of the following facts baffles me the most: that the species has survived this long or that these things are genuine predators. Of course, they’re low-grade predators; Penguins isn’t shy about demonstrating the perils of the Adélie world: skua birds, orcas, leopard seals, and the 150 MPH Antarctic winds that usher in the “warm season.”
The cinematography is as stunning as one would imagine in parts. If you must see this film, find the biggest screen you are able to do so … that is if you don’t mind risking snow blindness. (Adélie Penguins take all their shore leave in Antarctica, of course.) The film offers no “What if” scenario for when Antarctica melts, or how the Penguins natural habitat has been altered by global warming. I guess we’ll have to find out in the sequel. And, believe me, there will be one.
♪I can’t fight this sequel any longer
And yet I’m sure this thing is gonna blow
What started off as “just wrong” got so wronger
Why don’t they remake Vertigo?
And even as it wanders, this walking Klondike bar
Bravely battling the boom mic, and the camera trolley car
And I’m getting closer to giving this repeat one star
Yeah, I can’t fight this sequel any more
I’ve forgotten what was playing on screen four
It’s time to succumb to this bore
Forget esprit de corps
Baby, I can’t fight this sequel any more♫
Rated G, 76 Minutes
Director: Alastair Fothergill, Jeff Wilson
Writer: David Fowler
Genre: Black and white and bred all over
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Aquatic flightless birds
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Arctic skua fans
♪ Parody Inspired by “I Can’t Fight this Feeling”
**Opinion expressed is mocking derision of a Disney executive and in no way reflective of this writer’s personal feelings.
