Everybody loves a penguin

Each year, emperor penguins march more than 70 miles to their ancestral breeding ground. They make the trek during the darkest months of the winter, going without food for months, all in order to bring around the next generation of penguin.\nLuc Jacquet's beautiful little film brings the penguins' story to the big screen with sweeping landscapes, soaring music and pitch-perfect narration by Morgan Freeman. But more importantly than all this, "March of the Penguins" is a breath of fresh air in the swampland of summer cinema. This is a movie that doesn't rely on shock value or forced violence in order to derive entertainment -- it relies simply on the harsh realities of nature to conjure up anthropomorphic images of love, devotion, life and death. \nAntarctica, a land of snow and ice, provides a surprising (and stunning) array of color as the sunlight plays off the ice. The penguins, fat from a summer of feeding, waddle across the ice to the place where each one was born years before. The penguins quickly find a partner, mate and the mother produces an egg. The fathers then carefully scoot the eggs onto their feet and cover them with a flap of abdominal fat. This is harder than it sounds -- one false move and the delicate egg will freeze instantly in the sub-zero temperatures. The mothers then trek back to the sea to feed. If all goes well, the father hatches the egg and cares for the chick. \nBut all isn't guaranteed. Chicks die, fathers starve and predators catch the babies. Thankfully, "March" doesn't shy away from any of this. The story is of the penguins, and even in this whitewashed environment, none of the ugly parts are blurred out. On a side note, the egalitarian gender roles presented are something that should be worked into more movies.\nAll this drama is set to music that never strays from perfect. Some of it is epic, some of it is chirpy, but every piece of it sits perfectly with the action on screen. Morgan Freeman's gorgeous voice tells not just the story, but the emotion behind the story. The writing is prose-y and chewy, but never veers into sacchrinity. \nThe young girl in front of me was awed by this life-and-death tale. Her mother was awed. The two old ladies behind me were awed. And as for me? I'm glad I never have to be a penguin, but I'm glad I was able to be a part of their "March"