Cashing in on Earth Day, Disney brings us Earth, a nature documentary chronicling the trials and tribulations of various adorable critters. The good news: the film has some of the most picturesque shots of our big blue marble that have ever been filmed. Narration by James Earl Jones provides gravitas as can only come from Darth Vader and Mufasa. The bad news: if you’re a nature buff, you’ve seen this before, and you’ve seen it better. Earth is a re-cut version of the Discovery Channel’s award-winning Planet Earth series. This time, however, Disney’s involvement has put a decidedly saccharine gloss over the concept of survival of the fittest.
The film attempts to tell the stories of a family of polar bears, elephants, and blue whales while intertwining aerial landscapes and plenty of cool time-lapse footage of flowers budding and deciduous leaves changing. However, the stories are so disjointed that you begin to feel schizophrenic — five minutes of polar bears, then off to Africa for the elephants, some rainforest birds, vertigo-inducing footage of waterfalls, whales, back to the polar bears… lather, rinse, repeat.
Lest we think that nature is all blinky eyes and fuzzy rumps, Disney does splice in a few predators. However, no blood is ever spilled on their Earth. This might be great for an audience under ten, but it’s disingenuous for the rest of us. Meanwhile, relentlessly sweeping orchestrations continuously remind you that this is a Really Emotional Movie (and also to buy more Advil). The narration spends more time personifying the animals than it does making any cogent points about global warming or other threats. While the film is certainly family-friendly, the mash-up job does a disservice to the remarkable accomplishments of the documentarians; you’d be much better off springing for Planet Earth on DVD instead.
