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Arctic Tale

Whisker-close footage

By ALICIA POTTER | August 1, 2007

2.5 Stars

ARCTIC TALE: Nothing like whisker-close footage.

Al Gore may know his pie charts, but he’s no baby walrus. Tusk-less Seela and polar-bear cub Nanu take on the mantle of poster mammals for global warming in director Sarah Robertson’s dramatic documentary. As crumbling ice floes force the Arctic tots into danger, the realities of the issue — distractingly called “changing conditions” until the haranguing end credits — hit with urgency. Indeed, don’t get attached to any animal without a name. The whisker-close footage lives up to its National Geographic pedigree, and the walruses, braying like broken New Year’s horns, emerge as unlikely stars. In between montages set to disco, the stiffly colloquial narration by Queen Latifah veers from bizarre anthropomorphizing (Sela doesn’t mate until she finds a walrus who respects her) to pseudo-poetic dreck (Gore daughter Kristin helped script). All the same, this effort soundly delivers the inconvenient truth to the generation who’ll inherit it.

Topics: Reviews , Mammals, Nature and the Environment, Wildlife, More

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