mm, gotta love anti-American snobbery.

[alexist]

Quite a few of the British reviews of March of the Penguins have commented on the "overly sentimental" narration and said, more or less, "trust the Yanks to tack that on".

What they don't appear to know is that the original French narration had actors as the "voices" of the penguins, and by all accounts was even more sentimental and anthropomorphised than the American one!

But of course, it was the Americans who had to tack on a sentimental narration; could never have been the French....

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

Also, you have failed to show that the original was a failure due to being sentimental. Sentiment does not always destroy movies; the canon of Frank Capra, for instance, is rich with sentiment, and for my money contains a number of works of genius. Sentiment is a double edged sword; used right, it can make things very powerful indeed, used clumsily and it ruins a film. I don't know, obviously, but the original could have been a powerful and touching piece, for all its sentimentality, whereas the later version could have been clumsy and far less effective.