March of the penguins has a lot to answer for. This insipid National Geographic effort shovels its snout along that film’s sentimental spoor-trail, heading for the same gaping precipice where nature documentaries plunge into a suffocating whirlpool of audience-patronising, wilfully anthropormorphising nonsense.
Covering little that you haven’t already seen in the BBC’s Planet Earth, Arctic Tale relates the “adventures” of a polar bear and a walrus, chucking in some fart jokes along the way. Blending whimsy, ill-judged street-speak and sheer inanity, Queen Latifah’s voiceover is a supreme irritation. Targeted at pre-schoolers yet with scant educational value, Arctic Tale is best seen by no-one.