Documentary 'Earth' surveys the planet with familiar footage

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on April 21, 2009 at 11:00 PM, updated April 21, 2009 at 11:54 PM
Polar bear jumping across melting icebergs in the nature documentary "Earth."

Earth (G) DisneyNature (90 min.) Directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. Now playing in New Jersey. TWO STARS

'Earth' is a year-long trip around our beautiful bright blue marble of a world.

But it's sorely lacking a clear destination '" or even a logically detailed itinerary.

The idea is, ostensibly, to begin at the North Pole in January, and make a circuit of the globe in 12 months, stopping along the way to watch seasons change and animals

But things soon get confused.

At some points, we tarry so long the seasons get ahead of us; at other points, we lose the thread of our story. And for such an extensive trip around the world, there are some
huge blank spots '" like most of the Americas, all of Europe, and much of Asia.

For a round-the-world trip '" and what's being touted as the premiere release of DisneyNature, a new specialty label at the studio '" it feels a bit like a
budget bus tour.

It is, too. 'Earth' began its life in 2006 as 'Planet Earth,' a multipart BBC series; it subsequently aired in America on the Discovery Channel, narrated by
Sigourney Weaver, and was turned into a single feature-length film for foreign markets.

Now, finally, it comes to America, re-edited and repurposed again, with James Earl Jones providing the voiceover. Although this fact is obviously being downplayed, the studio
admits that more than half of this 'new movie' is old footage.

Nor is that all that's old.

Like other mass-market nature documentaries, the film relies heavily on folksy narration and sugar-coated facts. Jones talks about Mom and Dad Polar Bear; the camera is careful
to cut away before any predator actually dines.

The photography, of course, is gorgeous. We see rippling sand dunes and slowly drifting slabs of ice; there's remarkable, night-vision footage of a pride of lions chasing
down an elephant, and a starving polar bear making a desperate attack on a whole colony of walruses.

But what's the point, beyond the pretty pictures? That animals embark on perilous migrations isn't exactly news, and the jumping from species to species dissipates any
drama. And the two or three lines dropped in about global warming feel like an afterthought.

There is, as there was in the far superior 'March of the Penguins,' some under-the-closing-credits footage of how the cinematographers got their shots; this is,
surprisingly, the most entertaining part of the film, and could make its own movie (or a truly novel reality show).

But the rest of the movie? We've seen it all before (quite literally, if you're a fan of nature films on cable). The animals deserve better. And so, quite frankly, does
the debut of DisneyNature.

Ratings note: The film contains scenes of animals in peril.
