Deep Sea 3D (PG)

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Documentary (2005)
40mins US

Starring: Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet
Director: Howard Hall
Listings: London | Rest of UK and Ireland

Venture deep beneath the ocean waves with the latest spectacular IMAX documentary, narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, with music by Danny Elfman. Howard Hall, director of the 3D feature Into The Deep, invites us to meet some of the most strange, exotic and deadly inhabitants of the underwater kingdom, including the giant Pacific octopus, sharks, squid and a particularly lethal yet beautiful jellyfish.

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LondonNet Film Review

Deep Sea 3D is an amazing technological accomplishment of filmmaking, thanks almost entirely to the breakthroughs of 70mm IMAX film. As you sit in the theatre, the screen before you is large enough to take up your entire field of vision, leaving you without any point of reference outside of the film's images. Add to this a 3D perspective, surround sound and incredible cinematography, and you just might forget you're in a movie theater all together.

This underwater documentary was recorded on a massive duel camera system designed to mimic perfectly the three-dimensional perspective of the human eye. The entire unit weighed over 1,200 pounds, and could only record three minutes of the over-sized, over-expensive film at a time. Luckily, though, after ocean water rendered the rig buoyant, the camera was all but weightless for its pair of cameramen to manoeuver, resulting in some truly animated, exciting, and spontaneous shots.

The film includes wondrous images of underwater life that are given a whole new perspective in this format. Seeing a 4-foot-long fish in a documentary on the telly can't begin to do justice. The true scope and enormity of oceanic life comes to life here.

The film itself circles on a tired theme that all life forms need each other to survive, from the smallest plankton to the largest whale - which coincidentally has been the working message in just about every nature documentary ever filmed. Also, the film's A-list narrators, Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, sound somewhat interested at their best moments, downright bored at their worst. Then again, they can't be expected to turn lines about shrimp and octopuses into Shakespeare. And, let's be honest: this film wasn't made for those of us already well-acquainted with with the circle of life.