Under the Sea: Fish Tales in 3-D
- From: Jim Higgins <gordian238@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:47:16 -0500
Under the Sea: Fish Tales in 3-D
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1879446,00.html
Don't bother to tell your companions, especially if they're children,
that Under the Sea 3-D is a documentary. (Perhaps go with "that new Jim
Carrey movie," since he narrates.) Just take them along to the nearest
Imax. Because once they're settled in and have put on the WALL-E
glasses, the film has enough charms to completely seduce them. These
include 6-ft. garden eels who plant themselves en masse in the sea
bottom like a field of slithery reeds, the leafy sea dragon, an animal
so peculiar-looking E.T. would feel bad for it, and several sequences of
steamy cuttlefish mating. (A child in the screening I attended asked if
"that's why they were called cuddle-fish?")
Being underwater is a pretty surreal experience anyway, so the quirks of
3-D seem more forgivable, even fun and whimsical, in this environment.
Footage of sharks encountering giant sting rays and turtles casually
munching on deadly poisonous jellyfish are viewed through a mask, in the
dark; scuba divers see the ocean the same way. 3-D filmmakers have found
that objects moving quickly across the screen can make viewers nauseous,
but having anything move quickly into your field of vision in the water
is startling. Mostly the technology succeeds, however, not because it
makes you feel you're underwater so much as that you're no longer on
solid ground. At several points, you almost want to hold your breath.
(See photos of life beneath Antarctic ice.)
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1647012,00.html
This is the third aquatic documentary Howard Hall has directed for Imax,
after Deep Sea 3-D and Into the Deep 3-D. Shot mostly in coral reefs
around Indonesia and Australia, this one required lugging enormous
equipment (total weight: 8,000 lb.) about in boats and logging vast
numbers of hours under the sea for a mere 40 minutes of screen time. But
the brevity of the film, and the spectacular oddness of the creatures,
leave you — and, perhaps more crucially, your children — wanting more.
Awww moments, the tentpoles of so many nature documentaries, are mostly
reserved for the sea lions, who apparently enjoy looking at themselves
in the camera's reflective lens. Carrey is by turns serious and goofy,
which mostly works. At one point, a crab nonchalantly carries away a
jellyfish on its back. The jokes write themselves.
Documentaries for families always have to do an awkward two-step between
being entertaining and informative. Under the Sea 3-D splashes down
clearly on the entertaining side, and environmentalists might take
exception to the Ripley's Believe It or Not! approach it takes to its
subject. There's a dutiful hat-tip to the threat coral reefs face from
global warming, without any substantive advice on what a concerned
moviegoer could do about it. Nevertheless, it's quite a parental high to
see wonder on the face of a child. Even behind the weirdo glasses.
See pictures of America underwater
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1693557,00.html
--
Civis Romanus Sum
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