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Earth (6/10) by Tony Medley Runtime 110 minutes. As might be expected, since this is from Disney,
this has some awe-inspiring cinematography. As also might be expected,
some of the stories are awfully hard to swallow. Take the first one, for instance. We are shown a
mama bear and her two young cubs, just coming out from a winter of
hibernation. Then there’s a cut to what we are told is their “father,”
out on the ice, trying to get food, I guess. As the film progresses, we
keep coming back to the old man. Forgive me, but I don’t believe that
the bear out there on the ice has anything to do with the mama and her
two cubs. It’s just hokey story-telling. I could be wrong, and that bear
might be the father of the two cubs. But Disney’s modus operandi has
always been to make animals like humans (Remember Donald Duck, Mickey
Mouse, and Bambi, just to name three?). In so doing here they harm the
story they are telling. Disney has been advertising this by comparing it to
2005’s “March of The Penguins.” “Earth” is about as close to “March of
the Penguins” as Roseanne Barr is to Marilyn Monroe. ‘Penguins had a
cohesive story and told it from beginning to end. While Disney tries to
foist the story of the bears on us as a ‘Penguin-type story, it’s not. There is another story of a humpback whale and her
calf swimming 4,000 miles to their destination. It reminded me of a film
I saw on cable of a similar whale and her calf that were being pursued
by sharks, waiting for weakness to attack the calf. It was real and
heart-wrenching to watch. I don’t believe that Disney’s cameramen
actually followed their humpback whales all the way on their alleged
4,000 mile journey, but maybe they did. If so, that must have been one
boring assignment, which is why I don’t believe they did. Essentially, this is a bunch of stories that are
pieced together. They are interesting, but I doubt their verisimilitude. The film does talk about the rainforest, however
slightly. In all the rigmarole about “global warming,” the rainforest is
ignored. At least Disney knows that it exists although it foists a bald
canard when it says that, “as weather patterns change the rainforests
are starting to dry up.” What rubbish! The rainforest has been there for
60 million years. Right now, in the 20th-21st century,
suddenly they fail? They are disappearing because
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