Review: March of the Penguins

Rated PG-13 | 85 mins

IMDB Info

The mere fact that March of the Penguins’ subject, the Emperor Penguin, is able to survive and protect the egg of their growing offspring in the often negative-eighty-degree weather of Antarctica, for months on end, is limitlessly fascinating. The film is quick to inform us that “no other living creature can survive this ritual.” Apparently, Luc Jacquet and his crew weren’t thinking of their own participation in it when making that statement. It is almost equally remarkable that they were able to take the footage that is seen in the film, which was, for the most part, not enhanced by computer-generated effects. March of the Penguins is a documentary of limitless pleasures—Morgan Freeman’s wonderful storytelling (not narration) comes to mind, in addition to those I have already mentioned—although it unfortunately presents itself in a mediocre way. Out of his own desire to have his film seen by the masses, Jacquet has stretched it out to a feature-length of eighty minutes, allowing it qualify as multiplex-material. As a result, it often grows tiring to watch. As amazing as most of the material that it contains is, the truth of the matter is that once a viewer has seen one Antarctic landscape, they’ve seen them all. Had Jacquet cut the film’s length by twenty minutes and blown it up to fit IMAX screens, the gigantic vastness of the locales would’ve been far more captivating and the pacing of the movie would’ve become tighter. Still, there’s no denying the wonders that can be found in many elements of March of the Penguins, even if they, combined, aren’t able to match the grandness of 2003’s Winged Migration, as far as big-screen nature-documentaries go.