March of the Penguins (HD DVD)

Finally! Finally I have seen March of the Penguins and finally I can say, "Nope, not impressed." What is the big deal anyway? How many times do I need to hear that the penguins went 70 miles this way? Then they went 70 miles that way, and uh oh, guess what, now they have to go more than 70 miles because there is more ice. Yeah, these little fellas are amazing, especially considering they only get a short amount of time to have a bit of fun as the rest of their time on Earth is spent taking care of an egg, but I could have done with a 30 minute feature as opposed to 80.

I should say that the filming of this movie could not have been easy and based on the self-congratulatory feature on this disc showing a little bit of the making of the film it was certainly daunting, but I guess it just wasn't for me. My biggest curiosity is why people keep saying it is so good and that other people are going to love it. What is there to love? This is nothing more than an 80-minute National Geographic style documentary. National Geographic really outta consider making more feature length docs and getting them into theaters because if a movie about walking penguins can bring in $77 million at the box-office and an Oscar there has to be more out there for the animal film community.

Outside of the making of doc I already mentioned there is also a Bugs Bunny cartoon and a National Geographic Critter Cam episode on this HD DVD. Picture and audio quality are satisfactory and I have to blame the environmental elements at play for some of the more grainy footage.

Overall you have to applaud the filmmakers for their work here, but to say this is something people should buy is silly. You will watch this once and never again. Basically, once you know a penguin walked 70 miles back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth you pretty much get the gist of it and don't need to see it again.