Blu-Ray Review: ‘IMAX Under the Sea’ Still Dazzles on Small Screen

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CHICAGO – It’s easy to see why filmmakers like James Cameron are constantly inspired by the life forms that exist underwater. They are as fascinating and mysterious as any otherworldly being dreamed up a science-fiction author. BBC’s brilliant series, “The Blue Planet,” unearthed deep-sea specimens that continue to haunt my nightmares. It proved that monsters do sometimes hide in the dark, and exist only to feed (one fish had teeth so large that it couldn’t even close its mouth).

Of course, such images are guaranteed to terrify a G-rated audience, and “IMAX Under the Sea” offers a more cuddly, yet no less spectacular, look at creatures of the deep. It is filmmaker Howard Hall’s follow-up to his previous family-friendly documentary, “Deep Sea 3D,” and was released theatrically as “Under the Sea 3D.” Though no home entertainment system can come close to equaling the experience provided by IMAX 3D, this film still manages to dazzle on Blu-Ray, with images so lifelike, they really do seem within reach. Some of the underwater photography is so startlingly clear that the creatures appear to be defying gravity, as they soar through a decidedly alien landscape.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.0/5.0

Though the film was edited to fit the attention spans of its youngest target audience, and runs a crisp 41 minutes, the footage could easily have been expanded into a feature-length documentary. The filmmakers traveled to a variety of locations, from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia to South Australia, where cameras captured the stunning beauty of the Coral Triangle and the Great Barrier Reef. Many of the images take on an overwhelming grandeur, such as a swarm of catfish that moves like a wave, or the crown jellyfish that resembles a pulsating wedding cake, or an army of garden eels poking their heads through the sea floor, or the slithering sea snakes that are as gorgeous as they are venomous. When a camouflaged crocodile fish lunges at its prey, it inspires a real jump, as does an unnervingly up-close-and-personal encounter with a great white shark.

IMAX Under the Sea was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on March 30th, 2010.
Photo credit: Warner Home Video

Celebrity voice-overs are almost always distracting, as was true of the recent U.S. broadcast of BBC’s “Life” series, where narrator Oprah Winfrey always seemed poised to interview the animals. But “Under the Sea” makes superb use of narrator Jim Carrey, whose gentle humor and sense of genuine awe fits the footage like a glove. Other stabs at crowd-pleasing comedy merely come off as excessive, such as when a cuttlefish love triangle is accompanied by Doris Day’s “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.” If there’s a “character” that the filmmakers seem to favor, it’s the cuttlefish, which comes equipped with several memorable attributes, including a deadly tongue. Some male cuttlefish disguise themselves as females in order to get closer to the ladies, a mating technique sure to delight any cross-dressing nature lover.

The film’s second half is dominated by a preachy environmental message that will only annoy parents who still believe that global warming is a myth. Yet the destructive effects of inordinate carbon dioxide and ocean acidification on our planet is undeniable, and young viewers are guaranteed to have their hearts melted and minds provoked by the filmmakers’ call to save the coral reefs (a sentiment shared by Disneyearth’s upcoming “Oceans”).

“IMAX Under the Sea” is presented in impeccable 1080p High Definition (with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio), and includes some enlightening, though disappointingly brief, special features. A 7-minute promotional featurette includes sound bite interviews with the crew, including director Hall, who claims that the images produced by an IMAX camera are “virtually identical” to those he experiences underwater. There are also five behind-the-scenes webisodes that run a total of twelve minutes, yet include several fascinating tidbits. One of the most fundamental challenges facing the filmmakers was the constant reloading of the 1300 pound IMAX camera, which could only hold three minutes of film. Patience was certainly a primal necessity for this crew, who waited six hours underwater in a single dive to film a stonefish feeding, and traveled 600 miles out of their way to film the sea snakes. The best moment is when Hall displays the mind-boggling assortment of instruments worn for a technical diver setup. He has everything short of a Swiss Army knife.

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com matt@hollywoodchicago.com