Dolphins: IMAX (2000)

Dolphins: IMAX has dolphins galore -- so what's not to like? If you love dolphins, see this film. If you want to learn about dolphins, watch it and find greater cause to love them. Why? Because dolphins are the second-most intelligent creatures on the planet, clearly creative, constantly playful, capable of tenderness and emotion, possess perceptive faculties we cannot yet fathom, and they definitely communicate with their own complex language. Don't believe me? See this film and decide for yourself. (The anti-science crowd can move along, nothing to see here since you have already made up your mind about the world while keeping your eyes and minds shut tight.) Kathleen Dudzinski is a marine scientist whose studies and discoveries about dolphins form the bulk of the movie's fascinating narrative. (IMAX films tend to profile the work and reflections of one or more scientists -- always scientists -- as a way to personalize the science esp. for kids and to keep the audience's eyes and ears from crusting over from merely narrated factoids.) You can see the schoolchildren's eyes brighten as she makes dolphins come alive for them. She repeats a line heard in the IMAX film The Living Sea: "We can't protect what we don't understand." If the ocean is our world's final frontier, then dolphins alone promise a whole new territory to explore and understand. (As with nearly all IMAX-format films, the movie is clearly listed as 40 minutes in length; with making-of featurette, the DVD totals 89 minutes. Click my avatar to see my IMAX movies list.) Enjoy! 4.5 stars.