When I saw Under the Sea on IMAX 3D last year, I couldn't help but feel like it was more attraction than education, like a special show tucked in a coveted wing of an aquarium, or even a museum, where IMAX nature movies often play in. The fact that it was a 3-D experience projected on a giant screen certainly contributed to that sense of spectacle.
So it was with both curiosity and reserve that I revisited this 40-minute documentary on Blu-ray, knowing full well that the two aspects that impressed the most, namely the size of the screen and that pop of extra dimension would be absent.
As expected, some of the charm is lost with those absence. The meat of the documentary is really more in its presentation than its content. After all, why else would you lug that monstrous IMAX camera deep underwater in remote exotic seas—a hellish task that would make a frustrating Herzogian documentary in itself, I'm sure—if not to capture the deep-sea creatures for the best presentation currently possible?
Still, the spectacular images that IMAX camera snagged offer stunning resolution that looks great on Blu-ray, with the vibrant colors of the subjects preserved. I hesitate to recommend the doc for its assembly, and it's obvious that its shelf life barely extends past its IMAX 3D run, but with the right home set-up, it's not bad to gawk at.
As with museum-bound nature docs, there's no narrative thread or thematic consistency, only a checklist of creatures to showcase. One after another, IMAX: Under the Sea gives us select marine life from the depths of the Indonesian-Great Barrier Reef seas, presenting the two most important rituals of any sentient species: eating and mating.
Jim Carrey provides the narration in his best bedtime story voice, with the assumption that the primary audience of the film would be easily-impressionable children. Nothing wrong with that, obviously, and it's probably the correct assumption too, but are the puns and punchlines necessary? If so, you might as well have Carrey really ham it up like he does best. It's not just him, though; the doc adds slapstick sound effects and music to keep the tone fun and silly. Which is why it's a bit comical when Carrey suddenly turns serious for the obligatory environmentalist message towards the end.
IMAX: Under the Sea is meant to be a sequel of sorts to Deep Sea 3D. After documenting the American seas, the directors wanted to do the same with the oceans of more exotic countries next. The result is exactly that—no more, no less.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The main featurette is an interview with the people who made the film possible, and there's also a five episode video diary of the making of the documentary, each only 10 minutes long and covers a shoot in a particular country. The former is in high definition, but the latter is in web streaming quality (probably because it was made and encoded for the web and they just grabbed them for this release) which is disappointingly backwards.
What both have in common is that they are pre-theatrical release materials, so they refer to the film as an IMAX 3D film. In the interview, director Howard Hall keeps hyping up how great the 3-D looks and how awesome the big IMAX screen is. Not exactly something you want to hear after watching it on a 32 inch TV.
"IMAX: Under the Sea" is on sale March 30, 2010 and is rated G. Documentary. Written and directed by Howard Hall. Starring Jim Carrey.
