My Underwater Journey

Grafting sing-song voice-over onto underwater imagery of Hawaiian fish filmed off Kailua-Kona, My Underwater Journey takes about five minutes to blow credibility. Introducing Bert and Betty, a colorful pair of butterfly fish which are distinctly, predominantly yellow, the camera changes shots to show audiences a Bert and Betty now half-yellow, half-black. Oops. While young viewers will learn a few details about the sea life shown here (the octopus, the flounder, the puffer fish, etc.), this is essentially a slapped-together video with no sense of narrative arc (indeed the program ends abruptly without any summary), the aforementioned imprecision in matching shot to voice-over, and cookie-cutter background music that is numbingly vanilla. Some of the visuals are admittedly nice, but great nature footage is available on National Geographic entries as well as many other titles for a similar or lower price. Not recommended. Aud: K, E, P. (R. Pitman)