Deep Sea 3D Movie Review:


Imax 3D underwater cinematography is so spectacular that it doesn't matter how well the films are assembled. We watch in awe, engulfed in the imagery. And dreaming of a day when decent filmmakers work in this format.

There's a haphazard approach to this film, which doesn't feel like a documentary at all. Rather, it's a random series of undersea scenes tenuously connected by informative but uninspired narration, read in condescending schoolmarm style by Depp and Winslet. It's not actually the "deep sea" at all; almost everything we see takes place in shallow coral reefs as various creatures feed on each other. If there's an overriding theme besides the obvious moralising message, it's that living things love to eat.

And the footage is astonishing. Each sequence is a finely tined, jaw-dropping little story about the interaction between species, often involving one of them being consumed. But several clips examine how animals care for, protect and live alongside each other in especially unusual ways. This is captured by the Imax camera with such a bracing clarity of image that we actually feel like we're underwater, watching from a position just a little too close to the action.

The filmmakers make great use of a lively, unusual Danny Elfman score to heighten the tension in scary scenes involving attacking squids, marauding starfish, prowling sharks, gulping octopi and chomping eels. And other sections examine odd symbioses between predators and their prey, such as the barracudas sitting patiently as the tiny fish they normally eat scrub them clean. Many creatures have a remarkable alien-like quality--slugs, snails, jellyfish, anemones and coral all send out their tentacles, release their spoors, slither, wriggle or whatever they need to do to survive.

Bringing these various clips together under the banner of interdependence does work to a degree, as we do get a sense of how important every living thing is to each other. The concluding heavy-handed moral, about how man is destroying the planet, is of course followed by a gloriously hopeful final scene. With less preachiness, the film could have struck home for grown-ups as well as the children it's so obviously aimed at. But with Imax we've learned not to expect anything more than an eye-popping splendour, and this film certainly delivers that.



Rich Cline

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