I always know what the Disneynature films are going to be like, and I have liked most of the ones that I have seen.
Then I saw Penguins.
I don’t know exactly what made me hate this much as I did, but I wanted this film done with as soon as it started and the 70+ minutes of the film felt like two hours.
Now, I’ll get the positives out of the way quickly. The shots of Antarctica and the environment around the penguins are unbelievably tremendous. They are beautiful imagery from the opening shots through the entire film. The other thing I loved was the whole leopard seal stuff where the penguin pretends to be dead and the seal stops trying to eat it. That was fascinating to me.
But with every great shot or intriguing nature fact presented, we got this stupid personification of one of these penguins they named Steve and the voice over gave Steve the thoughts, choices and emotions of humans. I hated that. Every time the voice over, done by Ed Helms, was given in Steve’s “point of view” made me want to throw my Avengers popcorn tin at the screen. It was so cringeworthy for me that it ruined everything else.
Maybe it was just the day or the moment, but I hated this movie. The score is higher than you might think but that is for the beautiful visuals.
