Sunday, August 21, 2005

March of the Penguins

This afternoon, in full submission to the 101 degree heat, we took the boys to cool off at the movies. It helped that the movie was filmed on location in Antartica. Totally made me forget how hot it was outside.

What a beautifully made movie! My boys (ages 3 and 4) loved it. Several times, they laughed out loud.... when one of the Daddy penguins slipped on the ice, when a penguin lifted his wings and did a belly dance, and when the babies were learning to walk. And a few times, Aidan said out loud, "That's SAD." (When the egg cracked, when two babies died before the Mommies got back with food, and when the leopard seal ate one of the Mommies.)

A friend who saw the movie told me that the boys wouldn't like it. I'm proud to say she was wrong. They sat through the whole thing, paid attention, and talked about it later at dinner. It really made an impact on them. (But not enough to make them want to be penguins for Halloween. I know. I asked. They still want to be a Knight and a Dragon. ohkaaay.)

Anyway. Take your kids. The mating scenes are totally discreet. Even the seal scene was handled discreetly. There was no blood or gore or ANYthing that was scary to my boys. It was obvious what was happening, but it was handled so gingerly that it didn't scare them. Mostly, they loved watching the penguins. And Darren and I enjoyed the whole film. What those majestic animals go through to just SURVIVE is nothing short of amazing. What the filmmakers went through to get it all on tape is even more amazing still.

March of the Penguins

1 comment:

Sherilyn said...

Good! I was going to ask how it went, then forgot tody. I'm glad they were rapt with attention. Must be the past 3yo thing and the animal planet thing. The 2yo in my theater babbled through the whole second half of the movie and made me want to feed his parents to the sea leopard. ;)