Hidden Kingdoms (2014)

Touches You

As Good As It Gets

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

I found these series PURE art. Intertwined with the latest technology and awe-inspiring narrative, I felt succumbed into the world of these hidden kingdoms which, thanks to these brilliant minds behind these series, do not feel so remote to us humans, anymore. To be honest, I felt connected to the lives of these tiny creatures. It all seems so familiar. The struggle for survival, the daily challenges, the escape from predators, the chase for food, the planning for the future, the thirst for new experiences and independence. The only thing missing is love but that may well be another familiar feeling to us humans too.. I would watch them over and over again, the thrills, the visuals, the stories they all fill my imagination with joy.

Hidden Kingdoms is an embarrassing and misleading attempt to create the life world of small creatures like rats, marmosets or large beetles and show their day-to-day struggles for food, breeding and maintaining territory.The shows team overproduce every shot with high-frame slow motion sequences that are often interjected into something resembling live action footage à la "the Matrix". Completely overcooked foley fills entire episodes with preposterous sound FX, and whats worst of all is the lame computerized compositing effects, employed to show slow motion 'glory shots' of small creatures leaping to and fro. This is the only nature doco series I know of that uses a freaking BLUE SCREEN and comps its subjects in front of fake exotic backgrounds. The show's clearly too cheap and quickly produced to get rid of the fuzzy outline and obvious colour grading mistakes every time they appear. The soundtrack all-too-frequently blares loud Broadway style gangster music or massive classical crescendos while showing something as commonplace as a beetle climbing out from under some rice grains.To be honest about the quality of camera equipment, there are occasionally some great close-ups of the critters on show in this series, but often the choppy and confusing editing, the endless music video style transitions and sheer lack of establishing shots evince an annoying sense of falseness that permeates these overproduced, wide-angled "power documentaries" or whatever they're supposed to be.Its unfortunate that Stephen Fry got involved in this project as narrator. He's not exactly desperate for a paycheck, BTW. Trash television at its worst.

Excellent premises and subject, ruined by trying too hard to make it exciting with obviously fake shots, a never-ending and highly irritating invasive (and LOUD) background music, such as is employed in American children movies or housewife shows.It would have been much more exciting treated as a serious cutting-edge documentary rather than a weak Walt Disney spin-off. It does contain extraordinary camera work to be fair, which makes the treatment of it very frustrating. It's probably worth a 7 but I refuse to encourage the Beeb to carry on this Discovery Channel primary school vein :so, 6.

WOW! just WOW! When I saw this documentary starting up on the television, i thought it would be just another Animal Planet style of depicting animals in the usual fashion, but boy was I wrong!!!The visuals in this film are absolutely fascinating. Taking the perspective of a tiny mouse and other tiny creatures that we don't seem to care much about as opposed to large cats. Who would have thought the film maker could have captured such a suspenseful existence! The way the film is shot, takes you right beside these little fellas, and shows the courage that they much show each day, in such glorious fashion! Slow motion shots capture a much more entertaining style of Hollywood film and at the same time, maintain a level of education that you would find in any well planned out documentary. Stephen Fry does a great job in narrating the film in a very calm fashion. It doesn't need lively commentary, because the visuals take care of that!As far as documentaries are concerned, this is essential viewing. I am so glad I checked it out when it came out on television here in Australia, and you can be assured that I will be tracking down the DVD!