March of the Penguins finally came out today in my town! I saw the ad in the paper, and Max and I were there for the first show on the first day. Apparently lots of other people had the same idea, because there were about 50 people in the little theatre. At 11am on a Friday.
All I can say is wow. Those are tough little penguins. Not eating for 4 months at a time while balancing an egg on your toes in a howling blizzard? It may me hungry/dizzy/cold just thinking about it. Oh, I guess I can say one more thing: baby penguins are *SO* cute! Adult penguins are pretty easy on the eyeballs too.
Max (3.5 years) liked the movie. But a warning about taking a toddler deep in the "why" stage to this kind of a movie: expect to explain things for the entire 84 minutes. Luckily no one shushed us, but Max was a real chatterbox.
If you do go to see this movie, stay through the credits at the end. They have shots of the film crew and what they had to go through to get this footage.
I had posted about this before and was worried that there might be disturbing scenes for little kids. For all those with kids, and those who are kids-at-heart, don't worry. A few penguins drop off during the film, but it's never graphic or in-your-face scary in a Jaws kind of way. I'll post specific examples below, but in case anyone wants to preserve the suspense, stop reading now. (Although it's not like this is a mystery show. We all know what happens to penguins, right?)
OK, here come the specific examples of what happens in the movie.
Morgan Freeman (narrator) explains that some penguins don't make it. (He uses the word "die" and related words fairly infrequently.) Lone penguins are likely to freeze (picture of lone penguin waddling across the ice). Eggs that aren't kept on toes freeze (picture of frozen egg). Some chicks freeze to death (picture of frozen chick w/mom trying to wake it). Some adults are grabbed by seals (picture of adult penguin almost popping out of the water but pulled back by something unseen; it wasn't obvious what happened, she could have just slipped back underwater; followed by underwater picture of seal with penguin in its mouth, sort of hazy and a little far away). Some chicks are grabbed by birds (footage of some sort of bird running after and pecking little chicks; lots of chicks get away; no mention that this specific bird was ever successful but it's implied in the narration). Some daddy penguins don't make it during the winter egg-warming (picture of penguin lying down and "going to sleep" in a blizzard). Some dads don't make it on the long walk back to water/food (I think this one was just in narration, no pictures).
Max doesn't listen much to the narration, so I think that he didn't pick up on a lot of what was happening. In general he seems to be ok with death in the natural world (i.e. for animals and insects). His biggest concern was for the lone penguin early on, they showed a single penguin who was late for the march inland, walking all by him/herself. He kept on asking if the others were going back to get that penguin now. All throughout the movie.
Thanks for previewing any sad/scary parts so sensitively. Max is such a sweetheart for worrying about the lone penguin! This movie looks so awesome, especially since my husband is an avid birder. I can't wait to see it - I've only seen one movie in the theater in the last year and a half!
Posted by: abbyjane | Saturday, 23 July 2005 at 07:13 PM
Thanks so much for posting about this. Ever since you mentioned it a while back I've been dying to see it too, and it arrived in Hawaii last week! I too was wondering whether it would be too much for my son, but maybe if we go to the early matinee it won't be too bad if he asks alot of questions.
Posted by: myra | Saturday, 23 July 2005 at 11:33 PM
This is my first time to your blog but I wanted to thank your for the specifics regarding this movie. My son is enamored with animals of all kinds and has asked to see this. I now know that he'll be fine.
Thank you so much.
Posted by: Beth | Saturday, 13 August 2005 at 04:29 PM