Former French biologists and current French documentarists Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, in impossibly bright clear sharp photography, have here attempted to do for the insect world what their compatriot Jacques Cousteau once did for the marine one. (In science-fictional form, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and, to a lesser extent, The Incredible Shrinking Man had already successfully done it: refocus our frame of reference.) It's all incontrovertibly real -- allowing, of course, for the "studio" sets and lighting -- yet like a special-effects showcase, it raises the frequent question of "How'd they do that?" and even of "What on God's green earth am I looking at?" Two snails bumping uglies (to an operatic musical track) are self-explanatory. But what does the Sisyphean dung beetle want with his jumbo meatball and where is he trying to take it? And what is that bustlingly amphibious spider getting up to in the underwater air bubble? There is no narrator to help out (and the average viewer will not have access to the press notes), so that the movie clearly intends to excite wonder -- and horror -- and mirth -- rather than to impart information. It excites plenty. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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