Aliens of the Deep: Critic Reviews

It's good that a kid, and maybe even an adult, may want to 'touch' one of the so-called aliens thrust out for our inspection. But more important, a kid, and maybe even an adult, may want to become a human scientist.

A grandiose hybrid of undersea documentary and outer-space fantasy.

One sign of a successful IMAX outing is how it makes you believe you are there in every frame, and this one does.

Often thrilling.

We're treated to more intramural banter and golly-gee chatter among the crew than we can use, and are not given enough scientific information.

The 48-minute spellbinder will make your jaw drop with awe. And, like the best documentaries, it will also make you think.

Both dazzling underwater ballet and a welcome salvo for clarity in the current backlash against evolution.

Not a scientific documentary so much as a journey to an alien world, and basically what we want to do is peer out the portholes along with the explorers.

It's a fascinating, kid-friendly journey, minus some clunky dialogue and the injection of Hollywood-style hypothesizing about what Europa's aliens might look like.

Here we know only that Cameron and his bright-eyed young scientists (who take turns narrating) are heading to the deeper parts of the Atlantic and Pacific to observe the environment and life-forms down there.

The experience is so immediate and immersive that you actually feel as if you are swimming with the krill.

Puts some of these incredible creatures right in our laps. And we don't even need to travel hundreds of light years to see them.

Beyond a doubt the biggest movie ever made about shrimp, Aliens of the Deep is a technical marvel that still manages to fall somewhere severely south of marvelous.

Cameron's showmanship and his on-screen appearances make his documentaries far livelier than your usual IMAX nature documentary, and this one is no exception.

A master showman's large-format documentary, a movie with great images, great special effects and the sheen of Hollywood often missing in these museum or science-center movies.

Less focused thematically than its predecessor, the Titanic film Ghosts of the Abyss, Aliens of the Deep is nonetheless a visually enthralling undersea travelogue.

Yes, the work they're doing is mind-boggling and important, but sometimes the images alone are more than capable of speaking for themselves.

A fascinating science lesson for anyone interested in either deep-sea -- or outer space -- exploration.

It's not usual for documentaries to ingest the sci-fi genre, but in this case it's an eye pleasing and mind boggling excursion, beautifully realised and seamlessly integrated into the film.

The far more interesting stuff is back here at the bottom of the sea.

Once you get used to the "awesome" and "wow"-heavy dialogue, James Cameron's excursion into both 3-D technology and deep ocean trenches delivers some fascinating footage.

Even if these plants and animals did not exist, we may have already invented them, courtesy of those sci fi special effects magicians working overtime for the past decades.

That IMAX 3-D cameras have plunged so deep to record an often bizarre array of sea creatures undoubtedly delivers a certain 'wow' factor, but the accompanying commentary is heavier on breathless excitement than solid fact.

The final shot, in particular, is awesome, and confirms that the sooner Cameron gets back to making proper movies, instead of Boys' Own diversions, the better.

I want the old James Cameron back.