Movie Review--March of the Penguins

This movie wasn't what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of Ice Age or something like that. I did enjoy March of the Penguins, however. It's a documentary, narrated by Morgan Freeman, about the lives of penguins. This may sound rather dry, but it was really interesting. If there really is such a thing as reincarnation (which I do believe in), I definitely don't want to come back as a penguin.

The movie starts with the penguins' march (they walk or slide on their stomachs) of some 70 miles. They do this to spawn. They have to get to a place where the ice is really thick and won't melt until summer, so their offspring don't fall through. When they get to the spawning place, they engage in a sort of "singles" ritual. It's unknown exactly what they are looking for, but they are looking (interesting, since they all look exactly the same). They only have one mate, but I think this only lasts for a season. The females lay the eggs (one egg apiece). Once they do, they have to pass it off to the male right away, and he protects the egg from the cold via a flap in the skin. But they have to be really careful in passing it off, because if the egg is exposed for any length of time, it will freeze and the chick will die. Then the females, having lost a third of their body weight from producing and laying the egg, have to eat, which requires trekking back to where they came from and diving into the ice-cold water to get food. They stuff themselves with food, enough so that they can regurgitate some later and feed their offspring, and make the trek back again. Once they come back, the chicks have hatched, and they take care of the offspring while the males, having lost half of their body weight, go to eat. Some of the chicks freeze to death, and the mothers grieve, sometimes so much that they try to steal another penguin's offspring, though the other penguins stop them from doing so. They have a strong bond even though they haven't been together that long. But once it's time to leave the spawning place, and the babies can care for themselves, the parents and offspring probably will never see each other again.

Anyway, I knew absolutely nothing about penguins before seeing this, and I found it all really interesting. Looks like a really miserable life, though. I guess it's not like they know of any other way to live, though.