From National Geographic comes the beautiful documentary Arctic Tale, which follows a polar bear and walrus as they raise their babies. You'll only spend ninety minutes watching it, but the filmmakers spent fifteen years creating it, so make sure to appreciate all their hard work. You might be distracted by the cute animals and the beautiful scenery, but keep in mind this isn't a Hollywood movie with special effects to make the polar bears do whatever they want. Nature documentaries take an incredible amount of care, patience, and work.
Narrated by Queen Latifah, you'll see a polar bear mother and her two babies learning how to survive amidst the shrinking ice caps. In the good old days, it probably would have held audiences' attentions to merely focus on the cute white fuzzies, but as Queen Latifah so succinctly says in Last Holiday, "enough is never enough" and there's an parallel storyline to help those who get bored. A walrus mother and her little pup also struggle with the warmer water and longer swims between ice landings. This movie definitely promotes the message of climate change, and it doesn't shy away from teaching children the dangers of global warming. If you're not in the mood for something with such a tragic undertone, try renting March of the Penguins instead.
Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, one of the animals dies, and you might want to warn your child beforehand or skip the scene entirely.
