Flight of a Hummingbird

Earth, the movie
I don't tend to bother with movie reviews. But I thought this one was worth it, if only because it shows how much working on Carbon Cops spoiled me for good environmental storytelling.

Earth is a documentary by BBC Worldwide and Greenlight Media about life on earth, animals in the wild, their yearly cycles and how those are changing or being affected by climate change.

Much of the photography is beautiful, though some of it is ordinary. They've caught on film some timelapse of seasonal changes that is stunning, and some absolutely gorgeous animal moments. The polar bear cubs trying to learn to walk on a steep slope of snow, and the baby mandarin ducks taking their first flight to the ground and bellyflopping from three metres up, are both pretty funny as well as gorgeously cute. Overall, though, visually and as a nature documentary it's only B-grade, not in Attenborough's league.

Storytelling-wise, I wish they'd given the film to a good writer before they put Patrick Stewart's gorgeous voice across the text. It's not bad, but... there's a few basic mistakes. Like going on and on about whales eating krill, then putting up an on-screen text message saying the plankton are dying. If you're going to hammer one word, guys, keep the same word the whole way through. They also wobble a bit about what story they're actually telling - is it how important the seasons are? How lots of animals make these really long migrations and don't stop to eat or drink until the end of it? I thought it was going to be about the effects of climate change on the animals, but they don't really talk about that for most of the animals they show, only a few key ones. And even there it's only mentioned really briefly. Maybe they were trying to keep the message positive, but it somehow loses conviction in the process.

Basically, they just don't stick to any one storyline, and it seems driven by whatever cool nature photography they had that they wanted to stick on screen. The director/s have attempted to link their photography to the month of the year, but they get all over the place about six months in, jumping back and forth, showing pictures of Northern Hemisphere dogsummer and emperor penguins enjoying Antarctic summer at the same time and just generally forgetting to tell us when they think they are so even that theme gets a bit lost.

The editing is a little ordinary at times, and I think the film went about half an hour too long overall. Unless the aim was to have something you'd just play on silent in the reception area of a holistic wellbeing centre, which it would be perfect for, but in that case, why get Patrick Stewart to narrate it?

I did like the film. But I couldn't help but sit there and think "Guys, you didn't try hard enough to make this *good* instead of just ordinary".

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