Consider the emperor penguin. Go ahead, I'll wait. Turns out the tuxedoed waiters in "Mary Poppins" weren't far off from
nature. Real penguins look alike, goof around with each other, and are oddly human in their movements and mannerisms. The word "waddle," if not coined specifically to describe the way penguins walk, certainly describes them better than it describes anything else. This is good news for "March of the Penguins," a rather straightforward documentary that tells us, in simple terms, what penguins do. They spend several months in the ocean near Antarctica eating and playing, then return in the winter to their breeding grounds. There they pair up, mate, and produce an egg, whereupon the mother heads back to the ocean to eat -- she's famished by now -- while the father cares for the egg. When it hatches, Dad hopes Mom shows up with food for Junior before cold and hunger claim them both. Then Dad goes back to the ocean to eat while Mom tends the kid, and, once Junior is old enough, he or she and Mom head for the ocean, too, to reunite with Dad and be a family. And the circle of life continues. And yet it is so much more dramatic and fascinating than that! There are pitfalls at every turn. While Mom is in the ocean replenishing her strength to return to Dad and the newborn, she could be eaten by a leopard seal. While trekking back to the breeding grounds, she could be waylaid and not return in time to save the baby from starvation. Heck, even transferring the egg from its perch on top of Mom's feet (protected by the warmth of her underbelly) to the same location on Dad is fraught with peril: Penguins don't have hands to assist them in the process, remember. If the egg rolls away, they have about five seconds to retrieve it before the bitter, sub-zero cold kills it.
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