Deep Blue Review

Based on the eye-popping BBC natural history programme "The Blue Planet," this feature-length documentary about all things watery certainly boasts more than its far share of jaw-dropping moments but is unable to stop the audience's attention drifting away with the current. Picking and choosing the best moments from the series that was seen by over half of the UK TV audience, the makers have gone for the heart rather than the head with a almost commentary-free journey that takes in joyously leaping dolphins, fearsome killer whales and gorgeous coral life before plumbing the ocean's deepest chasms.

And while photography fans will, no doubt, fall down and worship at the wonders the BBC's natural history unit bring to the big screen, less technically minded punters will soon grow weary of such unexplained eye candy. Michael Gambon's barely-there, clichéd commentary just can't compete with the audience's remembrance of David Attenborough's fascinating and fact-filled burblings from the TV series and neither does George Fenton's over-wrought score hold the loosely-strung sequence of wonders together. A stunning, if not entirely successful, stab at making documentary history.