Thursday, April 13, 2006

March of the Penguins



Emperor Penguins of Antarctica live strange lives. Each year at the end of summer, they walk 70 miles to their breeding grounds, where they mate in monogamous pairs. The females lay a single egg and then walk back to the ocean to feed while the males watch the eggs. There is no food at the breeding grounds, so they wait through more than three months of bitter Antarctic winter until the eggs hatch and the females return to feed the newborn chicks.

The movie is supposed to be inspirational, in the same genre as Winged Migration. And some of it is, such as when newly paired love birds preen on each other, or later when you see the tragedy of the single egg breaking. But overall it felt like just another documentary—interesting, but hardly moving.

It’s rated G, though our kids had to close their eyes in the scene when the predator birds attacked the chicks.

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