Film

Disney’s new nature documentary unit, Disneynature, deserves some sort of prize for chutzpah, titling its first feature with such casual grandiosity. Of course, the team behind this doc—about a year in the life of photogenic animals around the world—tackled the same topic in more detail in a BBC series called Planet Earth, so perhaps it’s Fothergill and Linfield who like to think big.

They certainly know the codes of animal documentaries. They anthropomorphize the animals to a modest degree (nothing like the Disney docs of the 1950s, which made nature seem like suburbia with shaggier lawns) but do a reasonable bit of educating about things like whale migration patterns and, of course, global warming. The narration, delivered boomingly by James Earl Jones, plays to the kids in the audience (polar bear and elephant parents are regularly called “Mom” and their offspring “the kids”) but isn’t excessively cutesy.

The “year-in-the-life” structure gives this globe-trotting film some needed coherence, but it feels over-crammed in just 90 minutes. It’s an informative and beautiful film, with a number of “how’d they get that shot?” moments, but a tighter focus might have made it stronger. Don’t Mama Elephant and her adorable son deserve a film of their own?