Rainforest Home
By Davis Cook,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Fact-packed, beautiful nature doc has some animal violence.
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Rainforest Home
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What's the Story?
RAINFOREST HOME starts with several shots of a rainforest canopy shrouded in early morning mist, setting the stage for just what kinds of extraordinary mysteries are hidden underneath the trees. For the rest of the hour-long runtime the documentary unearths a wealth of information about what the millions of colorful animals and plants that live in the hearts of rainforests around the world are up to. The documentary's attention flows freely from species to species, picking up one after another the various ways in which each animal or plant is related to the next. Coatis, eagles, west lowland gorillas, frogs, tarantulas, tucans, giant cassowaries, tree kangaroos, bats, tapiers, and more parade across the screen, going about their colorful and sometimes alien-seeming lives in absolutely stunning audiovisual display. Near the end of RAINFOREST HOME there's a passage about the ways in which humans have let down the rainforest and about what humans can do in the future to keep the beauty and complexity of the rainforest running, closing out the hour-long runtime with the most important message of all.
Is It Any Good?
Throughout the hour-long guided tour at the heart of this documentary, the filmmakers let a vast and colorful array of wild animals and plants wander across the screen in all their complex natural states and interrelated dynamics alongside calm and thorough narration. Rainforest Home's audio and visual elements are truly stunning, with multiple detailed closeups of wild animals at wildly opportune times. One example that would make a viewer ask "How did they catch that?" is a closeup shot of a leaf-cutter ant carving out a piece of leaf with its pincers, aided by the actual sound of the ant cutting into the leaf.
As is often the case with nature documentaries, Rainforest Home's list-like narrative framework might bore some viewers who aren't already interested in biology. However, Rainforest Home in particular would likely be difficult for even the least interested viewer to pull away from, owing to its constantly shifting cast of out-of-this-world creatures large and small. In the end, on both a superficial and educational level, the documentary blows it out of the park (or should we say rainforest).
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about how many of these fish, bonobos, tarantulas, armadillos, crickets, turtles, bison, and many many more species can look so different from humans yet still worry about some of the same problems (getting enough food, conserving energy, etc.). What are some things that you do throughout the day that these other animals do as well?
Why are there so many nature documentaries like this one? What do we gain by making and watching nature documentaries?
How is watching nature documentaries about all these species better and/or worse in your opinion than going to the zoo to observe them in real time?
TV Details
- Premiere date: January 1, 2020
- Cast: Andy Wisher
- Network: Max
- Genre: Educational
- Topics: Cats, Dogs, and Mice , Science and Nature , Wild Animals
- TV rating: NR
- Last updated: October 8, 2021
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