Amazing Journeys

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating subject...
Review: I have a home theatre and if I get close enough to the 52" screen I get a mini-IMAX sensation! I have seen a few IMAX DVDs and find that many are a refreshing break from big ticket movies and wading through the drivel on TV in hope of finding something good. I love to sit with my family to watch something that can give us something to talk about and learn from.
However, I've found it hard to pick the IMAX gems to buy, since some are real bombs. This one looked interesting, educational and had the potential for humour. I wasn't disappointed. The Monarch butterflies were fascinating. I learned something about birds, but perhaps it would have been better for the filmmakers to find one species with an interesting story to tell, rather than concentrate on birds in general. And the crabs definitely supplied the humour I was looking for!
Some IMAX movies suffer from slow pacing, but in some ways this one moves too fast. You're just getting interested in the plight of those 100 million crabs crossing the highway on Christmas Island, when you're swept across the globe to see Zebras and Wildebeest trekking across the African plains. I really think they could have left the humans out and put a more interesting species in, but they had to preach about how we're turning from being hunters to conservationists, didn't they? Well no, they didn't HAVE to!
However the filmakers did a good job with the format and the timeframe, and wrapped everything up nicely at the end.
Technically the soundtrack, even with a DTS option, is lacking: it's 'loud' and sharp on the ears at higher volumes. And a word to the IMAX people: PLEASE encode your disks properly! Too often we see the DVD player trying to recover from bad flags in transitions which make it think it's playing back a video source - it ruins the quality of the otherwise great high definition source material. Not everyone watches on low-res 27" TV screens these days...