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April 29, 2009
Reconsidering Earth.
I love a good animal story like a raccoon loves mauling chickens, so I was seriously considering putting my hatred of the modern moviegoing experience on hold so as to check out Earth, the Disney-released re-packaging of the BBC's Planet Earth.
I was, that is, until I saw Lindy West tear this movie a new cloaca in The Stranger:
The Brits released Earth as a big-screen feature in 2007—the show's most spectacular moments, plus additional footage, pared down into one 90-minute film—and now, in conjunction with Disney, it's being released in the U.S. on Earth Day with new narration by James Earl Jones ("Is that Morgan Freeman?" someone near me whispered).Too bad it totally sucks starving-to-extinction polar-bear bootyhole! There are enjoyable aspects to Earth, things I'm happy to get to see on the big screen: the trip over Angel Falls, massive caribou herds, the aurora australis, the tops of the fucking Himalayas, that leaping shark, my old friend the dainty baboon... but the feature-length restructuring is an embarrassing, ham-fisted failure. It shies away from graphic death (remember when that chimpanzee eats that other chimpanzee's brain?) in favor of shoehorned emotion and anthropomorphized cutesiness. But the worst offender is the narration, which replaces the TV series' light touch and unobtrusive good humor with folksy chuckles and dishonest, unscientific babble.
A mother polar bear emerges from her den: "It's fresh powder conditions up here... she can't help but enjoy the slopes!" Baby polar bears walk around: "Unlike humans, polar-bear cubs don't always listen to their moms." A lynx hunts in a snowy forest: "Those that live here are so hard to glimpse, they're like spirits!" The birds of paradise perform their mind-altering mating display, now backed by a JAZZY SOUNDTRACK: "Get down, baby!" says James Earl Jones. How humiliating.
"Earth: Sucking the Dignity out of Animal Stories" (Lindy West, The Stranger)
Thanks for saving me and the fine lady $28.50 (or however much it costs to listen to popcorn-munchers and cell-phone-talkers these days), Ms. Lindy West.
