Movie Review: Oceans

<i>Oceans</i>. Photo / Supplied

The G rating for this visually stunning nature documentary should be accompanied with a note that it "contains commentary that is banal, incomprehensible or unhelpful - sometimes all three at once".

The voiceover, ponderously intoned by Pierce Brosnan, only narrowly avoids making the movie unwatchable.

Certainly, given the chance, I would have preferred to watch it with the sound off. That way I could have avoided such excruciating observations as the sea "smiles at the sky" or that the ocean "is more than just a place; in a very real way, [it] is alive".

Trite anthropomorphism (sharks as "smiling playmates") is par for the course in nature documentaries, of course, but Earth, the previous film in this series, avoided it, as did Travelling Birds/Winged Migration, the film that brought film-makers Perrin and Cluzaud to world attention.

Frustratingly, the commentary devotes little of its word count to useful information. If you want to learn anything about the oceans - I'm assuming you already know that pollution is a problem - this is not the film for you.

But there is no denying its visual splendour.

Like Earth, it blows the nature documentary up to big-screen splendour and the results are eyepopping: a school of sardines as large as a three-storey building is attacked by dolphins, sharks, whales, and seabirds all at the same time; spider crab armies do slo-mo battle on the ocean floor; newly hatched sea turtles run the death race from egg to shallows as predatory birds swoop; giant jellyfish look like yellow parachutes.

This is the second in a Disneynature series, which releases a film every Earth Day (April 22) in the US: movies on flowers, big cats and chimps are in the works.

LOWDOWN

Stars: 3.5/5
Directors: Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud
Running time: 104 mins
Rating: G
Verdict: Magnificent to look at; pity about the words.

-TimeOut