Life

2009
9.1| 0h30m| TV-G| en
Synopsis

David Attenborough looks at the extraordinary ends to which animals and plants go in order to survive. Featuring epic spectacles, amazing TV firsts and examples of new wildlife behaviour.

Director

Producted By

BBC

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Reviews

Interesteg What makes it different from others?
Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some
Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.
Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Hot Rog I love the BBC's nature documentaries. They are some of the best in terms of photography and detail. LIFE is a favorites among them and David Attenborough again does a stellar job of narrating, providing hitherto unknown facts about life in all it's various niches. The chapters on Plants and Insects were best ones. I never knew how extensive and diverse these life forms are and all the environments they occupy. Simply amazing! This is a good educational series for children as well as adults. There is so much to learn about how nature works. The more we know, the more appreciative we become of our unique blue dot in space.
Roedy Green I was expecting this film to have a creationist slant, but it does not. It is a bit like David Attenborough for children. It has first class nature photography, but it is aimed at children with a dumbed-down narration by Oprah Winfrey and somewhat Disneyfied music. It sometimes has an odd prudishness about fish reproduction.The creatures chosen are each bizarre and entertaining but ones I have seen before.Some of the principles of evolution are presented, but in a subtle way. The focus is on strange animal behaviour, not how it could have evolved. I learned something new, that the schooling behaviour of anchovies is indeed very effective against predators.It is not totally prettified. It shows flamingo chicks that died after they fell out of the nest.I think the insect segment was most interesting with the most material I had not seen before. The jousting tournament with the surprise ending really tickled me.There are bits of Disneyesque anthropomorphising, for example talking of insects "fighting for their dignity".This is first rate family entertainment. I am ready to see it again already.
whynot2 I certainly take no issue with the overwhelming positive reviews that preceded mine: the series provided amazingly photographed and dramatically presented insight into the diversity of life on the planet. We watched the entire series, and wish we had kept track of the number of times that we said "Oh. My. God." or "That is so bizarre..." Very much like "Planet Earth", "Life" demands a renewed sense of wonder of all that surrounds us.Having said that, and to take nothing away from the indisputable positive attributes, I thought that the series fell something just short of 'absolutley perfect'.At the highest level, information, and video images (albeit amazing ones) are presented quickly and are short. I'd liken the effect to flipping through a NGM, as opposed to reading the articles. The effect is strong, but I was left thirsting for a little more hard information. I realize that one could probably do a 10 part series on any one of the many lifeforms that are touched on in any single episode. But I still felt somehow shorted...like I was being shown shots to maximize the 'wow!' factor and emotional response, rather than present information.which leads to the more specific criticism: over and over again, my wife wondered...where the heck is that, and what is the scale of that thing??? With respect to the former, general place names are given, but many aren't that familiar to me...some sort of mapping segue would have been nice. I fully acknowledge that such would need a really artistic touch in order to avoid a 'cheapening' effect, but would satisfy our curiosity. Perhaps even part of the 'special features' on a DVD set? With respect to the latter, many times, we were shown amazing pictures of bizarre creatures, but often with no sense of scale. Size or mass range was sometimes mentioned, often times it wasn't. Often times, especially with the amazing photography, one couldn't really tell of the subject was 1 inch, 1 foot or 1 yard in size.Notwithstanding these comments, I'm looking forward to buying the set when they come out, and look are hoping that they contain the sorts of 'making of' features that were included on the "Planet Earth" set.
MrRowBot Words cannot describe how amazing this documentary is. Watching the series, you will continuously wonder how the camera crew was able to film the events and in such high definition.When I first watched the 'Planet Earth' series, I thought the production qualities on a documentary of this genre could not be surpassed until I watched 'Life'. Narrated by David Attenborough, 'Life' feels like an improved version of 'Planet Earth' with a focus specifically on how life works. The series shows how complex, beautiful, and harsh life is with absolute clarity.Most of us live in cities away from wildlife making us forget about the world beyond humans. 'Life' takes us on a journey into nature we never get to see in our normal lives, and for the most part, never knew existed.