The Amazon, Tibet, Greenland, Iguazú Waterfalls, Madagascar, Namib Desert, and Okavango Delta constitute The Greatest Places. Not a bad lineup, with a lot of promise for incredible imagery and mind-bending facts. Unfortunately, in 40 minutes, you’ll sit down and only get four to five minutes with each locale. In the nature doc genre that has hit the stratosphere thanks to incredible projects like Planet Earth and The Blue Planet, this particular entry falls far short of the high watermark set by its phenomenal predecessors.
Avery Brooks narrates, lending his rich voice to the should-be breathtaking visuals. Unfortunately, the script he was handed is as corny as they come, skipping the meat that Planet Earth seamlessly integrated into David Attenborough’s incredible narration (for the less discriminatory or Anglocentric buyer, perhaps it was Sigourney Weaver who you gave eleven hours to). Instead, the whole film moves at lightspeed and trades the good facts for the catchy lines about life, meaning, beauty, etc. Planet Earth earned the right to comment on the splendors of our planet, thanks to its superb production quality and breathtaking images that said more than words ever could. The Greatest Places, however, seems like the ugly stepsister, boasting the beauty it just doesn’t have.
Produced by museums in Cincinnati, Fort Worth, Minnesota, and the St. Louis Science Center, one wonders where the money went. While the BBC revolutionized how nature is observed and presented, The Greatest Places seems to have hired a helicopter to fly around and take shaky aerial shots of its target areas. Every once in awhile, someone set up a camera on the ground and the audience is treated to thirty seconds of an elephant getting out of a watering hole, seen from behind. The music might be classical, but a little Sir Mix-A-Lot “I Like Big Butts” throwback might have been a better fit.
Shot in IMAX, the Blu-ray transfer also has a lot of unfortunate fish-eye shots. Unlike other IMAX transfers that play well on the home television, this one keeps making you feel like you’re looking at the world through a warped peephole. The section dedicated to Tibet is particularly bad, bending the nomadic people like a funhouse mirror.
The strongest part of the film comes first, giving the audience false hope that The Greatest Places may be worth watching. Madagascar is given a disproportionate amount of attention, perhaps in time but certainly in detail. The cameras stay predominately on the ground, actually capturing engaging footage of the lemurs indigenous only to this one part of the world. There are a few comedic moments that could have been used to personalize the animals, endearing us to them like Planet Earth did so masterfully. The adrenaline, fear, hope, sadness, and joy of watching the BBC’s production were a product of a superb combination of elements: writing, narration, music, sound effects, and the mesmerizing cinematography itself. The Greatest Places occasionally has one of these on its own, but never any of them together.
So why buy it? Apparently there is absolutely no reason to do so, specifically because the entire movie can be streamed for free on iMDB. So if, after reading this, you are still curious or just so addicted to nature programming that you can’t miss a single one, hop online and check it out. Obviously, the distributor doesn’t have highs hopes or else they wouldn’t be handing it out for free like the candy no one wants left over long after Halloween has passed.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
Nothing but an IMAX trailer reel, that cheap cop-out to an actual set of features. That said, if there were any, what would be the point of watching them?
"The Greatest Places" is on sale May 17, 2011 and is not rated. Documentary. Directed by Mal Wolfe. Written by Pamela Stacey. Starring Avery Brooks.
