A waddle of penguins go for a walk (March of the Penguins - Luc Jacquet (DVD))

Member Name: moo2moo

Product:	March of the Penguins - Luc Jacquet (DVD)
Date:	17/09/09 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fantstic film footage

Disadvantages: Lacking in detailed naration

Spectacular, magnificent, stunning, breathtakingly beautiful scream the captions from the DVD cover sleeve. My daughters were expecting great things from this DVD. The image of the male penguin and his chick added to the excitement. What we got was something quite different.

The clue is in the title. Its an 80 minute long documentary following the journey of a penguin across the frozen wastelands of antarctica. The footage is gobsmackingly awesome but far too dull for a six year old who very quickly got bored as nothing much actually happens. Its just a bunch of penguins going for a walk. She failed to grasp the challenges the penguins faced or the threat of death that hangs over their every waking moment in the simple struggle to survive. She was amazed at the underwater footabge shown but all in all its too high brow for a young child. My eldest aged 9 on the other hand was in awe of the whole thing and remained glued to her seat for the duration. She would have preferred a lot more detail from the narrator who glossed over a lot of the events we saw performed leaving me having to explain (very badly) the hows of the actual mating.

As an introduction to the penguin life cycle its a very good start but would have infinately better with more detail from the narrator and far less repetition.

We did learn some interesting facts. A group of penguins on land is a waddle, on water is a raft, on nests is a rookery and the babies are a creche. I'm sure they'll come in handy at a pub quiz eventually.

Summary: A brief introduction to the life of a penguin