The splendors of ‘Earth’

By CARY DARLING

If “Earth,” the first release from Disney’s new Disneynature imprint, looks just a little bit familiar, it should.

The roughly 90-minute documentary — being released in theaters Wednesday to coincide with Earth Day — about the extraordinary animal life on this big blue ball we call home is a revamped version of BBC/Discovery Channel’s “Planet Earth,” the stunning, years-in-the-making, Emmy-winning, 11-hour series that aired two years ago.

In fact, “Earth” is more of an addendum than a simple condensation as this take deals more with animal behavior than its predecessor, which focused more on the elements and the environment. In addition to alternate footage, there’s even a different narrator this time around: James Earl Jones replaces David Attenborough. Maybe the whole thing should have been called “Earth: The Remix.”

In any event, even those who own “Planet Earth” on DVD, and have been awestruck by it many times, might still want to trek to the theater to achieve the wide-screen experience.

“Earth” primarily dwells on three groups of animal families: a father polar bear separated from mom and her two cubs; a female elephant and her calf in the hunt for water across the arid Kalahari; and a humpback whale and her calf migrating from the tropics to the frigid waters of the Antarctic.

In between, there are excursions into both humor (tropical birds’ oddly hypnotic mating dances), horror (a newborn gazelle being chased down by a cheetah), and time-lapse photography (plants blooming and dying). Yet the focus returns to the drama of the bears, the elephants and the whales.

Very young children who might strongly identify with the young animals in danger here might find the film somewhat stressful. But what should appeal to both children and adults is the splendor of the cinematography, whether it’s swooping shots of the African plain or cranes struggling to cross the Himalayas on their route south.