Category Archives: Video

I took my kids to see a screening of the new Disney movie “Earth.”

It was miserable. These are the top 3 things that I hated about it.

1. It was boring. This movie is based upon a 5 disc dvd series that we own called “Planet Earth”. Somehow the producers managed to make the 90 minute movie more boring AND less informative than any one of the 40 minute DVD or even all of them COMBINED!! It’s literally unbelievable.  I can’t figure out  how they did it. You would think that they could just go through the entire DVD series and make the movie a “best of” compilation.  Some how BBC managed to make watching the desert for 40 minutes on DVD entertaining AND informative and somehow Disney managed to make even a 5000 lb great white shark flying out of the water and catching a flying seal seem more drab than soduku. Which is what you’re going to need if you go and see this in the theater.
2. The soundtrack was insulting. It was like listening to the Anne of Green Gables soundtrack over Terminator 2. Seriously, how many times do you want me to laugh and cry in 90 minutes while watching seagulls and fish all because you raise the volume of your cellos? And having James Earl Jones narrate? Is that really necessary? As if the visual of watching our entire world change through 4 seasons,  over 12,000 miles,  with 2 ton species battling it out for survival isn’t enough; nope we need Darth Vader to dramatize it.  Thanks disney,  until this movie, I had never even noticed a soundtrack in a movie.
3. It was confusing. Polar bears in the snow, elephants walking through the desert, whales swimming, polar bears in the ice water, elephants walking through the desert, whales swimming, polar bears dying, elephants swimming, whales….still swimming for twwoooooooo hoooouuuuuurrrrss.  It wasn’t until I re-watched the preview after I watched the movie that I realized that there was supposed to be a point to all of that. The “story ” (and subtitle) is “The Remarkable Story of Three Families and their Journey across our Planet. “ I hate to keep on doing this, because I don’t consider myself some foreign film snob, but when the BBC told the same story of each of these “families” it took 5 minutes. Somehow, Disney managed to stretch it out to 90! It was the characters of Lion King, with the plot line from Magnolia, with the intensity and length of Chariots of Fire.  Maybe they thought watching animals mating,  ripping each other to shreds, and going to the most exotic places on our planet wasn’t enough. It’s like a reality version of the incredible Journey except that the Incredible journey was actually an Incredible movie.

Here is a trailer I made on what the movie “earth” is really like.

To verify that the soundtrack used is the actual soundtrack from the original trailer click here.

So why all the ranting on a Disney Movie?

Here’s the deal. The reason why this movie was such a tradgedy is because the actual BBC series called “Planet Earth” was so mind-blowing incredible. It’s the only DVD that I have ever purchased in my entire life. Sooooo…instead of going to the theatre and blowing $8 a ticket, go to blockbuster and rent the first disc and watch the episode”From Pole to Pole”, or better yet, borrow it from me. The footage is insane and the narration is really captivating. The have a whole episode on caves and another one on the desert and they are super informative and entertaining.