August 2 , 2005

I like big birds and I can not lie
You other moviegoers can't deny
That when a bird walks in with an itty bitty head
And it poo poos on your car
You get sprung
Wanna get out the bat
Cuz you wish that bird was stuffed

My leopard seal don't want none unless you've got fat hon
Dial 1-900-moviephone and kick them nasty thoughts
Penguins got back

Ok… got that out of my system.

Before I get into how I feel about March of the Penguins, let's get the business out of the way.

The story of this year of the documentary is families. What Laura Kim and her marketing team at Warner Indie have done that no one else has ever done nearly as successfully is to sell a documentary to children and families, which competes with the teen demo as the most powerful niche of the moviegoing audience these days.

Paramount Classics went after the same idea with Mad Hot Ballroom and had some success, but the movie itself was more demanding and, because it was dancing, it was a built-in turn off for boys. March of the Penguins demands a fairly good attention span, but very much like Finding Nemo, there is something about animals and the sounds of the wild that are hypnotic.

This brings us to the history of this film, which is not getting attacked for being a complete reconception of the original film. But the choice was, clearly, brilliant. The idea of Morgan Freeman telling the story, like the warm grandfather taking the audience on his lap and telling the tale… again, it adds a level of near hypnosis… a deep soothing voice… perfect.

The result is a film that could do $30 million, maybe even more. And it happens to be a documentary, surpassing the prior animal adventure, Winged Migration, by removing the challenging part of the experience… watching a documentary.

Congratulations are due Ms. Kim and Mr. Gill, no question. Big, big props.

My guess would be that the market can handle two of these films a year. And if the good folks at National Geographic and Disney are not going into their massive archives of animal photography and preparing reconstructed versions of those films for re-release, not only for theatrical, but for DVD, they are nuts. (I don't think they're nuts.)

But Warner Bros. may be nuts, burying Carroll Ballard's Duma, which is not a doc, but has much of the power of one, with photography that reaches beyond.

In any case…

For me, March of the Penguins is too much of a good thing.

It is beautifully shot. The tale tells us about things we do not know much about. And them li'l penguins are cute, cute, cute.

But I found myself asking nagging questions throughout. Does a penguin shit on an iceflow? Are they actually vomiting regurgitated food into their child's mouth? And, most importantly, is there any way for a human to tell the difference between a male and a female penguin or is it like bird gay-dar?

I also tend to despise anthropomorphism in a documentary. "Most of all, this is a story about love."

This is a story about love the way that the story of a crack addict stealing to get more crack is about love of crack. It is a remarkable story of nature, which is what a human is reduced to when suffering a physical (and sometimes an emotional) addiction.

Don't get me wrong. I am a sucker for a sappy old love story. I'm not averse to going there. But even in a film like Finding Nemo, which was so completely anthropomorphized, part of what was so brilliant for me - thinking about it in retrospect - is that the animals still stayed within the boundaries of their animal lives, even when the envelope was pushed. Turtles stayed in the jet stream… sharks had the urge to eat other fish… the blow fish blew up as a defense mechanism… and so on.

Of course, the reality of the emperor penguin - they spend nine months of every year of their life after the fourth mating and literally starving on a life-threatening ice bed in order to procreate - is brutal. Without the idea of love, it is a turn off. But the notion that an animal goes through all that for love - which is counterintuitive given that they are serial monogamists, moving on to new member of the tribe each year - somehow makes it a happy story.

I do find it fascinating. But again, questions. What do the young immature penguins do in the winter when everyone else is on ice? How is the egg fertilized? What do penguins who lose their eggs do… do they head for the water right away or wait for the crowd? What is the construction of the pouch that the egg is warmed in for months? How long can a penguin survive without food. Etc, etc, etc.

I trusted what I saw in March of the Penguins, but I don't trust the science. There is too much storytelling for me to feel like I really know anything much more than the basics.

I get what works about the film for audiences. And while Grizzly Man is a much, much, much better film, I would be enraged if I brought an 8-year-old to see the film because I thought it would be like March of the Penguins. Paraphrasing Werner Herzog… that would be misunderstanding the nature of the film… Grizzly Man is about death and obsession and the limitations of human nature… and there are some very pretty bears in there too. If you want to give your kid some heavy nightmares - and perhaps your friends too - take them to Grizzly Man. It is a genius film… but it isn't sweet.

I didn't hate March of the Penguins. I can't say I really like it, at least for me, either. I'd send my 14-year-old niece and her friends. But I'm not the audience for this film. And while WIP will get their cut of my ticket price, they don't need me either.

It does make me sad to think, however, that this film will receive more attention from my colleagues than Grizzly Man or Fernando Meirelles' brilliant The Constant Gardener combined.

E-ME.