Movie review: Under the Sea 3D

by John P. Meyer

Director Howard Hall has buttered his filmmaking bread from the making of sea-themed nature films, the latest of which is Under the Sea 3D, a sumptuous oceanic buffet of a 40-minute film narrated (unobtrusively, it should be noted) by Jim Carrey.

It's been said before, but this film brings it home: the new 3D filming and projection technology provides for a seamless, totally believable (and absolutely enthralling) viewing experience. Watch this thing on a wraparound IMAX theater screen (such as the one at the Cinemark 17 at Webb Chapel and LBJ) and you might as well be standing in a diver's suit outside the Captain Nemo's S.S. Nautilus. It seems just that real.

(NOTE: the polarizing 3D glasses work best if one maintains a still and level aspect to the screen: any movement or tilting of one's head will have a deleterious effect on the illusion of dimensionality.)

The filmmakers take us on an undersea odyssey from the shores of Papua, New Guinea to the Great Barrier Reef to the waters off southern Australia, described by the scripters as the last bastion of retreating coral reef species, whose range is diminishing (and edging southward) in advance of the destructive forces of global warming and acidification.

We get an up-close and personal look at a wide variety of sea life in their natural habitat, from great whites to frolicking sea lions to predatory masters of camouflage such as carpet sharks (a.k.a.wobbegongs). We find out more than we ever cared to know about cuttlefish (e.g.: cuttlefish don't cuddle), and we get some of that COMIN' ATCHA! 3D in-your-face stuff from a gaggle of sea snakes: those with a tinge of ophidiophobia may find themselves diving for the buttery-coated floorboards.

A minor grouse: there's a bothersome tendency on the part of foley crew to add a bit too much splashing noise to scenes in which bottom-dwelling critters suddenly dart from their watery hidey-holes. I understand the necessity of providing an aural touchstone where none would actually be present (it's the equivalent of swooping noises emitting from tie fighters in the void of Star Wars-ian space), but some of this sloshing approaches bathtub levels.

Furthermore, describing the the antics of nautiloids or the amorousness of cuttlefish in terms of their human emotional equivalents has a tendency to dumb down (or perhaps young down) the tone of the piece - though I suppose, after all, that the tendency to personify is human.

While I am skeptical about the hopeful environmental statement offered up at the end of the film, I hope the filmmakers' observations about the increasingly enlightened nature of humanity turn out to be correct.