I've had the pleasure of watching several excellent IMAX films, most notably Amazon and Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees, so I know that it's possible to produce an entertaining, informative, and visually impressive short documentary. The reason that I'm starting off my review of The Living Sea with that comment is that, if the only IMAX films you watch are ones by Macgillivray Freeman Films, the creators of The Living Sea, you will tend to assume that all IMAX films are fluffy, pointless pieces that aren't even worth 35 minutes of your time.

The Living Sea comes remarkably close to being totally content-free. The film jumps from one sea-related topic to the next, and there's no overarching structure to the film, so each segment is basically independent: we see a segment on tides, another on the Coast Guard dealing with rough waves, one on surfers, another on humpback whales, and so on. Each segment only runs about three minutes... how much information can be presented in three minutes? Not a whole lot in the best of cases. In the case of The Living Sea, what we get are simply an assortment of attractive images and a few nice-sounding platitudes about the power of the ocean, and so on. In what appears to be an attempt at bringing some meaningful content into the film, on several occasions we're told that what happens in one part of the ocean affects all the rest of it. And that's it. There's no elaboration on that thought, no consideration of how that affects or should affect how we relate to the sea, nothing to back it up and explain what scientists mean by it.

The narrator repeats several times the platitude that "we have to understand the ocean before we can protect it," which is first of all not necessarily true (we don't have to understand exactly how the ecosystem works to get the general idea that dumping pollutants into the water is a bad idea, for instance), and second of all highly ironic given the lack of content in The Living Sea. Yes, it's a very good idea to understand the ocean... too bad The Living Sea doesn't actually further viewers' understanding by providing some genuine informational content. Then again, given the overall style of the program, it seems to cater to MTV-generation viewers with 30-second attention spans; perhaps the filmmakers feared that these viewers would be soured by anything remotely "informative" rather than purely visually entertaining. Personally, I don't care for an "absolute lowest common denominator" approach, and I don't think it's even particularly effective, because when push comes to shove, The Living Sea is boring: pictures without content or meaningful context can only go so far. Anyone who is considering watching The Living Sea will do far, far better with a documentary that manages to be visually stunning, interesting, and extremely informative all at the same time: Blue Planet.

Adding insult to injury is the narrator. You'd think that having Meryl Streep on the job would mean we get a good-quality narrator. You'd be wrong. Streep sounds like she's reading the script cold, off of cue cards, and with a distinct lack of enthusiasm to boot; the result is that the narration is actively bad.

The DVD

The Living Sea is a two-disc set, packaged in a single-wide keepcase. The first DVD has the program and special features, and the second disc has the program in high-definition format.

Video

The Living Sea falls below the average mark for most of the IMAX films I've reviewed in terms of image quality. The image has a slightly grainy, noisy feel to it, with detail being lost in middle- to long-distance shots. Colors and contrast look fine, but edge enhancement is evident in many scenes.

Viewers have two video options: a widescreen and a 4:3 version of the film. The widescreen version is presented in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio and, disappointingly, is not anamorphically enhanced. The widescreen version offers slightly more visual information, as it appears to include more material to the sides of the image: it's not just a cropped version of the 4:3 image, even though the 4:3 is the more typical IMAX format. Viewers will likely want to choose whichever image that fills their screen, as both look correctly framed for their aspect ratio, and the IMAX experience is best with the picture as large and screen-filling as possible.

Audio

Whoever put together the DVD of The Living Sea ought to read up on menu design and usability, because the audio choices for the film are inexplicably tied to the video choices. If you choose the widescreen version, you have the option of either a DTS 5.1 or a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack. If you choose the 4:3 version, you can have either the Dolby 5.1 or a dubbed Spanish Dolby 5.1 track, but no DTS.

The actual sound quality is quite good. The DTS spreads both the music and the surround effects nicely, creating a pleasing, immersive audio environment. The Dolby 5.1 track isn't as rich, but still sounds quite good. Both are clean tracks that do a nice job of balancing narration and music.

Extras

The main special feature here is a 37-minute "making of" program. It's as fluffy as you might expect from the nature of the main feature, with the added twist that everyone is very self-congratulatory. If you enjoy seeing clips from the film while having the filmmakers say what a great job they did, you may enjoy this feature. Otherwise, it's pretty much a wash.

The other special features are a seven-minute segment on "MFF History," providing an overview of other films done by Greg Macgillivray, trailers for other IMAX DVDs, and a text blurb on Macgillivray.

The second disc of the set has the complete feature in a high-definition transfer. As there are currently no high-definition DVD players, this version of the film is intended to be played on a PC running the Windows XP operating system.

Final thoughts

The Living Sea consists of 35 minutes of pretty ocean-related video, accompanied by a completely pointless and content-free narration, spiced up by the occasional laughably trite platitude. Given that there are many other outstanding documentaries out there on the subject of the ocean, like Blue Planet, there's absolutely no reason to waste your money or your time on The Living Sea. Skip it.