A Documentary Directed by Howard Hall

Narrated by Jim Carrey

Rated G

I admit, I'm late to the party.  Before Digital 3D began to invade mainstream movie theaters, I didn't have much interest in IMAX 3D and the plethora of nature films that have been shot in the format.  So I make no claim to authority on whether Under the Sea 3D is in any way novel, but it is awfully nifty.  Getting up close and personal with various critters that call the coastal waters from New Guinea to Australia home, it provides and entertaining look at the day-to-day lives of some very bizarre lifeforms.  Only occasionally too cutesy for its' own good, Howard Hall's documentary delivers enough amazing sights, fish-on-fish violence and <gulp> sex to engage all but the most jaded of IMAX viewers.

Narrator Jim Carrey takes us on a trip Southward starting off the coast of New Guinea, traveling through the Great Barrier reef and beyond.  We meet many peculiar creatures like the camouflaged Stonefish and Jellyfish of totally alien shapes and sizes.  A veritable forest of sea snakes digs in on the Ocean floor and stands upright against the current waiting to catch anything that drifts nearby.  Crabs and Jellies, Shrimps and Fish form peculiar symbiotic relationships.  Adult Convict Fish spend all their time in tunnels, to which their babies swarm back each day:  no one knows if they feed the adults food they've picked up in their travels or themselves.  But the stars of the show are Cuddlefish.  Their colors constantly changing to reflect their emotional states, these bizarre aquatic critters do everything you need for a story:  the males beat each other up for the right to mate with the hot Cuddlefish babes.  It's an amazing, alien world, but as the global climate changes, its' time may be running out.

Let's not sugarcoat this.  Fish do three things:  they eat, they mate, and they use assorted fishy tricks to try and live to eat and mate another day.  While Under the Sea 3D does make a few attempts to sugarcoat the food chain with pop music and excessive anthropomorphism, at times it's surprisingly raw:  footage of a sea turtle eating a jellyfish a bite at a time while it swims would be at home in a jellyfish horror flick.  If the movie tells us nothing else, we learn that fish can be really mean.

But they can also be beautiful, and the IMAX 3D visuals are absolutely stunning.  You'll come no closer to climbing into an aquarium tank and taking a seat next to these amazing creatures.  It's not just clarity that works in IMAX's favor, it's also sheer size, the screen's ability to completely fill your field of vision.  And the filmmakers are not above tossing in an FX bubble or two to enhance the feeling of being underwater.

Almost completely unwacky, Carrey makes an amiable tour guide with enough teeth to sell the cruelty of the undersea world (and our ability to impact it) and enough charm to keep things light for the kiddies.  Again, I'd have preferred to go without the pop soundtrack, but even when the movie's playing to the back row, it's giving you cool stuff to look at.

And, at 40 minutes, doesn't overstay its' welcome.  Under the Sea 3D does exactly what it says on the box:  delivers awesome underwater critters doing what they do and doing it in 3D.  But you should probably leave the jellyfish at home, they might be traumatized.