Metacritic Film

Deep Sea 3D

Starring Johnny Depp (narrator), and Kate Winslet (narrator)

MPAA RATING: G for General Audiences

IMAX Corporation
Documentary
45 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters March 3, 2006

Deep Sea 3D, the new immersive, underwater adventure from IMAX, transports audiences deep below the ocean surface in multiple locations around the waters of the globe and gives them never-before-seen, up-close encounters with a wide range of undersea life. (IMAX)

DIRECTED BY
Howard Hall

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

78 / 100

Critic Reviews

90 Los Angeles Times
It would be a mistake to think that if you've seen one fish up close and personal you've seen them all. Deep Sea 3D is a total-immersion undersea adventure, in which the oceans' glories are on vivid display in three dimensions.
90 The Hollywood Reporter
Deep Sea 3D, along with the recent Imax films "Coral Reef Adventure" and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," is a glorious example of educational entertainment at its best.
88 TV Guide
Forget haunted houses and the mountains of the moon: There's no better environment to show off the wonder of the immersive IMAX 3-D experience than the deep blue sea.
80 The New York Times Laura Kern
The soothing voices of Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet provide the informative yet often uninspired narration. And Danny Elfman's mystical sounds serve up just the right atmosphere for this almost complete immersive experience, during which adults will be made into giggling children, and children into aspiring marine biologists.
80 Wall Street Journal
I have minor misgivings about the use of a few Disney-esque sound effects, as well as some conventionally garish voicings in the score by Danny Elfman, Hollywood's current master of the macabre. But none of that diminishes the educational value of Deep Sea 3-D, which was directed by Howard Hall, or the sometimes ethereal, sometimes fearsome beauty of its cast of trillions.
80 Chicago Reader
The immersive quality of 3-D is particularly well suited to undersea documentaries, and this one, directed by Howard Hall ("Into the Deep"), offers a close-up look at such fantastic creatures as the fried egg jellyfish, the mantis shrimp, the sand tiger shark, and the thuggish wolf eel.
75 New York Post
A lively score by Danny Elfman and some of the most dramatic sound-effects work since the Three Stooges only add to the appeal of Deep Sea 3-D.
75 Chicago Tribune Michael Esposito
It's all about the pictures. Those images create a vision of nature that even a strip miner would want to conserve.
75 Boston Globe
Travels around the world via the oceans' floors to show us symbiosis at work in a variety of ecosystems.
60 Variety
Imax 3-D process has lost its original novelty, and little is done in Deep Sea to find new and exciting ways of using the medium.

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