Art for kids...

Took the little Heckman girl to see March of the Penguins Friday night. Good friends and cheap babysitters, what can I say?

The showing we saw - 6:45 on Friday night - was filled with families with fairly young children. Only one couple - of the roughly ten groups - was childless, and I'm guessing that they came because of the arthouse advertising for this film. It's kind of interesting to me that this nature film - a National Geographic production - is being marketed both as a children's film and an artsy nature film. And, surprisingly, it does a really nice job of straddling that divide.

The film chronicles the journey by Emperor penguins each year across seventy miles of ice to breed in the area of Antarctica where they were born. The fathers then stay with the eggs while the mothers journey back to feed, then the parents switch places, back and forth for nearly a year. Along the way we see entertaining stumbles and waddles from the rarely graceful penguins, but these light-hearted moments are more relief than major tone, as much of the story is the numerous opportunities for things to go wrong - an egg dropped, cracked, and frozen in seconds; a forgotten penguin not finishing the journey; a snow storm blowing babies from fathers; an albatross snacking.

The tone of the movie overall is more somber, speaking of the determination of the penguins who spend so much of their time and energy protecting the eggs and chicks that ensure the species's survival. We see death on screen - eggs, chicks, adults - and the death os not candy-coated. Nor, however, is it presented in gruesome fashion. The seven-year-old with us had no problems dealing with the passage of even the cutest of baby chicks because she saw the it wasn't - her words - violent, cruel death but just death from nature.

As an educational tool, the film is wonderful. Our screening was complete with a semi-constant low murmur of children asking questions of their adults and the adults answering in hushed tones. No one seemed to mind as everyone in the theater was being as polite as they could be while still letting the kids learn about life.

As an entertainment film, the pacing is well-done, and the production values are amazing. The scenery is stunning, and the close-ups of the penguins are incredible.

My only issue with the film was with the humanizing of the penguins - lines talking about the penguins kissing and falling in love - were clearly aimed at a younger, probably less-scientific audience than the one I find myself a part of.

This isn't a science film for adults. It's a nature film for adults and their children. It has a story (even crediting a screenplay writer in the front credits) and tells that story quite well.