OCEANS (Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud). 84 minutes. Opens today (April 22). For venues, trailers and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNN
Maybe it’s the gearhead in me, but my favourite parts of modern nature documentaries are the clips at the end where we get to see the cameramen or women in the same shots as their subjects.[rssbreak]
They convey a sense of scale, for one thing, and let us appreciate how much effort goes into making movies like this.
In Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud’s Oceans, just such a montage runs over the end credits: a diver swims right alongside a great white shark, sending a chill through the room even though Pierce Brosnan’s mellifluous narration has just informed us that these eating machines are not the monsters they’ve been made out to be.
That’s the point of Oceans, which, much like Perrin and Cluzaud’s 2001 avian appreciation, Winged Migration, is an enraptured global travelogue focusing on a single subject. This time it’s marine life – playful sea otters, wobbly penguins and recently discovered deep-sea creatures that look like silk scarves and squeaky toys.
It’s spectacular stuff, and unlike the last DisneyNature release, Earth, this one doesn’t shy away from the harsher realities of life in the wild. A sequence about killer whales stalking sea lions isn’t exactly red in tooth and claw, but parents may want to run through the circle-of-life speech before the lights go down.
