REVIEW SUMMARY

It's impossible to watch the thousands of emperor penguins huddled together against the icy Antarctic blasts in Luc Jacquet's documentary film without feeling a tug of anthropomorphic kinship. Never mind that emperor penguins have been doing this for millenniums and that this is their way. The feeling that these creatures are brave, indomitable souls surviving unimaginable physical hardship for the sake of their families is inescapable. This sentimental but riveting film has no qualms about playing on our emotions. One teaser ad announces, "In the harshest place on earth, love finds a way," over a picture of a mature penguin gracefully bending down to feed one of its open-mouthed young from its beak. Although "March of the Penguins" stops mercifully short of trying to make us identify with the hardships overcome by a single penguin family, it conveys an intimate sense of the life of the emperor penguin.

Stephen Holden, The New York Times