Documentary
2006 / 107 minutes
Rating: 6/10
This is the sequel to Life Story: the one that hasn’t be told, and once again there’s loads of gorgeous nature footage, and lots of fascinating information shared. There’s ongoing commentary about how each animal’s abilities show the impossibility of evolution. And the whole film is a Gospel presentation using the animals as illustrations of God’s amazing handiwork, and their predatory abilities as evidence of a broken world.
The documentary is divided into two roughly equal parts, with the first exploring life under the oceans. A strength of the film is how many different animals are covered, but a weakness might be that it goes so quickly from one to the next. We get to see the octopus’s astonishing ability to camouflage right before we jump to the goatfish to learn about their special whiskers that serve as a tasting tongue and probing fingers. Then we’re on to turtles and how they can navigate the vast distances of the ocean to lay their eggs back where they were first hatched themselves. And on it goes, for at least a dozen sea creatures.
The second part starts off with monkeys, and touches on springboks, zebras, millipedes, elephants, rhinos and more. The anti-evolution commentary here focuses especially on the supposed link between monkey and Man.
Caution
The way the narrator describes evolution you’d have to conclude only small children and complete morons could ever fall for it. Evolution is foolish, but what this film doesn’t acknowledge is that some very smart people hold to it, and the Devil is also quite clever, which means there’s been some serious brainpower at work for a good long while now to come up with some creative just-so stories. And they can sound really good. The objections to evolution that the film raises are valid, but they aren’t slam-dunks, mike-drops. As an evolutionary takedown, this is only good for the already convinced.
One other caution would be if you’re watching this with young children, there are a few brief shots of animals eating animals, and a second-or-two long clip of elephants mating, though shown from a distance (I don’t think kids would even know what’s going on, except that the narrator is talking about “reproduction” at the same time).
Conclusion
Life’s Story 2 is at its best when it’s highlighting cool bits of information about the various animals, and thankfully there is a lot of that. The reason this rates only a 6 out of 10 is because, as a nature film there’s too much anti-evolutionary commentary, and as an evolutionary takedown there’s too little. And what’s said is too simplistic.
However, for a younger audience, especially if this is their first exposure to evolutionary thought, Life’s Story 2 might be the simplified introduction they need. So this could be a good one for a family movie night.
And one big mark in its favor is you can watch it for free below.
