dbborroughs Review of The Sea Around Us

The Sea Around Us (1953)

Once you get past the awkward opening minutes this is a very good movie

[7/10 · 15 June 2009]

Irwin (Poseidon Adventure/Towering Inferno/Lost in Space) Allen's Oscar winning look at the ocean and seas. Actually its bases on a book by Rachel Carson. This is a 62 minute look at various sea life. The film begins with a horrible creation of the world bit that segues into a god awful "This is the sea..." or similar nonsense where we get quick cutting and stentorian speech thats more at home in a exploitation trailer "See man vs shark" that sort of thing over and over again. After about ten minutes of really lousy material the film settles down into footage of sea life. To be certain by todays standards its nothing special when compared to the numerous Discovery Channel specials, but its still impressive.Some of it it is actual sea footage, some is from aquariums and much of the non-nature footage is staged or borrowed. but it doesn't matter since once the film gets up and running it just neat stuff (though I could have lived with out the man vs shark bit). Its a good film and worth a shot. I should mention that the film ends with a warning about global warming, which the film says started just before 1900 and which "very shortly" will cause the seas to rise and will flood us all out. Clearly Al Gore is late on the band wagon yet again.