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'Deep Blue': A sadistic, dispiriting nature film

"Deep Blue" is possibly the most repugnant movie of the year and definitely not for kids.

It doesn't mean to be (I think). Documentarians Andy Byatt and Alastair Fothergill have strong nature-lovers' credentials (apparently, they're with the BBC's Natural History Unit) and they probably intended to do for creatures of the sea what "Winged Migration" did for denizens of the air.

Miramax Films 'Deep Blue' D- The verdict: Just repulsive. Where's PETA when you need them? Directors: Andy Byatt and Alastair Fothergill Narrator: Pierce Brosnan Run time: 83 minutes Release date: June 3, 2005 Rating: G, but with graphic footage of death. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Deep Blue"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

At its best — and some sequences are absolutely fascinating — the film gives us a portrait of the life aquatic without Steve Zissou. Dolphins plunge playfully through giant waves. A coral reef beckons, as mysterious as it is colorful. Jellyfish hang under the surface like ghostly parachutes. And way, way, way under the sea, unimaginable creatures in bright neon colors float by, as if God had been on hallucinogens the day He created them.

All this is well and good. Sometimes better than good. But then we get to the meat of the movie, so to speak, in which the filmmakers reveal they're more interested in the cycle of death than the circle of life. Probably a profitable decision since, as those revolting "Most Extreme" TV shows demonstrate, there's apparently a huge audience out there who want to watch a lioness kill and eat a baby zebra.

Yes, of course nature is a brutal, unyielding, survival-of-the-fittest kind of place. But consider how the sublime "March of the Penguins," which opened last week, takes care of business. Older birds don't survive the winter, baby chicks are preyed upon, etc. But these harsh life lessons are conveyed in a few seconds.

Not so in the sadistic "Deep Blue." Baby seals are tossed into the air like peanuts and swallowed by killer whales — repeatedly, in slow motion and from different angles. A three-month-old whale is drawn away from its mother and eaten alive by sharks. And, lest we fail to get the full sickening effect, we get a glance of its carcass.

The filmmakers linger obscenely on these deaths, as the specially commissioned symphonic score rises to a majestic crescendo more suitable to lighting the Olympic Torch than the massacre of young animals.

This is a nasty, nauseating, dispiriting movie and, to repeat, whatever you do, don't take the kids — no matter what the G rating says.