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Earth

• Narrated by James Earl Jones
• Directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield
• Classification: PG

Disney has promised to buy a lovely, life-affirming green tree for every opening-week ticket purchased for its Earth Day documentary spectacular.

That's a sales gimmick that will make some moviegoers say, “Aw, isn't that great.” More cynical viewers, however, might think it a politically correct strong-arm tactic that's a bit too close to the infamous 1973 National Lampoon magazine cover gag in which a revolver was put to a puppy's temple – an image accompanied by the merciless threat: “If you don't buy this magazine we'll shoot this dog.”

To those skeptics we can say, relax. Yes, the new movie, which debuts for Earth Day today, is being promoted as an act of feel-good environmental activism. And there is plenty here that might give the hard-hearted pause. At times, narrator James Earl Jones lays on the faux folksy whimsy with a trowel.

“Unlike humans, polar bears don't always listen to their moms,” he tells us at one point, suppressing a warm chuckle. Still, for all its obtrusive smarm, as a spectacle Disney's Earth is right out of this world.

A split-level view of a humpback whale.

A year from now, you can be sure that every electronics store in North America will be trying to sell its HD-widescreen contraptions with Blu-ray DVD editions of Disney's Earth . There are a hundred scenes here that will elicit happy vowel sounds from family audiences: delicate underwater ballet sequences with cavorting seals; elephants moving like football running backs to evade hungry linebacker lions in the parched African savannahs; a fierce-grinning white shark devouring its prey with an almost carnal pleasure.

Much of the eye-opening nature footage has been repurposed from the Discovery Channel's Emmy-winning 2006 mini-series Planet Earth . But it has all gone through the Disney filter, which means that animals (there are 42 species from 64 countries here) can reliably be divided into two categories: heroes and villains.

The good guys would include elephants, humpback whales and polar bears, all of whom are threatened with extinction. We know they're good because the film presents them to us as families. The villains, meanwhile, like all movie hit-men, are grim, unmarried loners – wolves, sharks and lions – who only run in packs when they're in a bullying feeding frenzy.

Of course there is an unnamed villain here as well: Earthlings, who act as both celebrants and spoilers of our threatened planet. The film soft-pedals its pro-environmental message, however. Disney's Earth would much rather have us love nature than hate those who carelessly destroy it.

Still, by hiring James Earl Jones to narrate, Disney has prepared youngsters to understand that man is equally capable of heroism and villainy. Jones, of course, is the voice of Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, in the Star Wars series. He's also the father of Luke Skywalker, a would-be hero who crossed over to the dark side.

Special to The Globe and Mail