E-Mail This Article to a Friend Black-and-white gold Penguins march towards the DVD jackpot BY RYAN STEWART

What was the secret to March of the Penguins’s multi-national success? How did a nature film go on to gross more money than any other non-Michael-Moore documentary in U.S. history?

Simple: it delivers what it promises. The film’s called March of the Penguins, and damned if it doesn't show penguins marching. Also, people like penguins — they’re cute, and they move in amusing ways. They’re fun.

What that doesn't answer is who, exactly, the market for the film on DVD is. When there’s four-foot penguins up on the big screen, you're forced to pay attention to them. And that's fine, because they’re entertaining. But on the small screen, this movie can turn into background noise all too easily. On the upside, this presents an opportunity to make witty remarks during the proceedings — particularly for those who enjoy recreational drugs. But if you aren’t watching it in the right mood, you can get, well, bored. Plot-wise, there’s a dry stretch in the middle between the laying and hatching of the eggs as we wait for the mothers to come back from gathering food. Once the chicks start walking around on their own, it picks up again.

THE FEATURES

So here’s the next logical question: what special features would be on this DVD. More footage of penguins?

Well, yes. There’s a featurette called " Of Penguins and Men, " a making-of narrated by director Luc Jacquet doing his best Jacques Cousteau. The amount of work that went into this project is easy to appreciate, but a lot of the footage (and some narration) is remarkably similar to what's already in the movie. Among the shots that didn't make the final cut are some genuinely sad images of more of the chicks that didn't survive. You may want to spare your kids the trauma.

More family-friendly features include National Geographic’s " CritterCam " segment on penguins, a kid-friendly science lesson that delves deeper into the penguins’ biology (beyond their mating rituals.) There’s also a Bugs Bunny cartoon ( " 8 Ball Bunny " ), in which the wabbit escorts a wayward penguin back to his home in Antarctica, only to discover — spoiler warning! — that he's really from New Jersey. This cartoon from 1950 hinges on a character that's supposed to be Humphrey Bogart, so don’t be surprised if the kids (hell, the twentysomethings) seem a bit confused. Personally, I would have rather seen " Frigid Hare, " in which Bugs battled an Eskimo caricature to save the same penguin, but Inuits have (justifiably) complained about that cartoon's negative stereotyping.

Final Score: 7.5/10