4/5 Good but not Great
  by Claude Fletcher (Kingstown, St Vincent & The Grenadines)
The visuals on this documentary are beautiful, exceedingly so, and this is both a plus and a minus. I got the feeling at times that the editors were torn between making an educational documentary and a beautiful set of moving images.
Maybe I'm being unfair, but this pales in comparison to the BBC documentaries like Planet Earth. I was particularly disappointed with the commentary for the most part as it seemed halting and poorly strung together.
Having said that however I like the fact that the series is based on half hour segments and it is indeed a spectacular visual treat.

1/5 Water Life "dissapointing"
  by S. J. Fleay (Bandung Java Indonesia)
This 3 disc blu-ray collection appeared impressive...well pricewise....
However Water Life (to me) is quite a dissapointment.......having been captivated by the BBC Planet Earth on Blu-Ray perhaps I was expecting too much. Water Life is not a BBC production....far from it....
In High Definition the pictures are "pretty" ...lots and lots of aerial shots, and if this was to receive a rating in the animal world, there'd be an X for the sex scenes....animals birds and reptiles copulating. The titles and there are plenty appear to be in spanish...the narration....maybe I'm wrong but the narrator who has clear and crisp english delivery sounds Japanese. The narrative text....mistakes...does the Amazon River hold 15 percent of the world's water...or should it be 15 percent of the world's "fresh" water? Also a doubtful fact. Occasionally there are obvious mistakes in other parts of the text....maybe the audio engineer did not understand english well enough for a final control. There's not so much scientific fact...the text appears to have been full of words, often stating the obvious. Look around for the "big deals" on BBC Blu-Ray discs......give Water Life a miss...I wish I did.
Stephen Fleay
retired international correspondent
Bandung Java Indonesia


5/5 The visual stuff BluRay was invented for !! Pure Underwater Eye Candy - [with environmental message]
  by DjDan12 (Chicago, IL)
I suggest you watch the Water Life's "Planet Water" Blu-ray disc first -- it's the best of the 3 discs and kinda introduces what you are in for: lots of amazing pure, blue HD underwater, and on-the-ground cinematography of lifeforms, a lot I've never seen before -- in any doc. It brings up the message of the entire series which is -- the lives of everyone on the planet, from fish and marine life, to flora and fauna, even humans - hangs in a delicate balance right now - a tipping point -- and the things we do now have a ripple effect on the oceans - which in turn have a ripple effect on what happens on land: global warming, endangered species, overfishing, introduction of nonnative species, pollution, sea levels rising. Man has an effect that reaches across the blue planet.

More than Planet Earth - The Complete BBC Series & even Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," this series makes the case -- through impassioned cinematography - that the diversity of life on this planet will most certainly diminish over time if we do not act now. A total call to action. Hope we heed it while there's time!

* BUT - from a more shallow point-o-view - THIS SERIES ALSO WORKS AS TOTAL UNDERWATER EYE CANDY - [AN EXOTIC FISH TANK YOU DON'T HAVE TO CLEAN]. So shut off the sound if you don't want the narration telling you about environmental messages that plague your conscience. Either way, this is a must if you have a BluRay player. This is the stuff it was made for -- not some romantic comedy. Sandra Bullock in HD, while entertaining, is not what the extra HD pixels are there for. The bigger the TV, the better for this set. I still have yet to buy a game for the PS3 - but the BluRay player made it a must-have for me. Enjoy !!

5/5 Stunning Image
  by Thu Pham (MN United States)
Don't hestitate to buy this DVD. Much, much better than Planet Earth. Beautiful and stunning image. I owned Blue Planet, Coral Sea Adventure, Planet Earth, Animal Amazing Event but this one is the best.

4/5 A sometimes flawed, but well executed documentary series
  by J.P.E. (Los Angeles, CA USA)
I was excited for the "Water Life" release, as there are few long format documentary series focusing primarily on aquatic cinematography available on Blu Ray, with the exception of some single titles (Discover, Planet Earth, NatGeo). That being said, the production, though commendable and ambitious, does not live up to the grandeur of the BBC produced nature docs, which I would consider the standard. They do however use them as a model, excluding any footage of scientists in the field, talking heads, animation, etc, which I find to be a unwelcomed fluff in most Discovery Channel and Natgeo wildlife products. The series is produced by CIN-TV (Caribbean International Networks) and co-sponsored by a range of conservation organizations, so the message tends to lean strongly towards environmental responsibility and protection more so than biological behavior or analysis.

A great deal of the footage of wildlife is shot in (sometimes extreme) close-up. Some of this aforementioned imagery is gorgeous and unique, and offers a visual treat in HD. Shots of fish eyes, scales, amphibian skin, birds, etc, provide a certain amount of intimacy not often found in larger more sweeping surveys of nature on film. It also allows the cinematography and editing to be a bit more abstract and creative by not limiting to perfectly framed shots and allowing sequences to play-out with more of a montage feel. In my opinion there are bit too many time remapped shots however (specifically vistas and flowing water), which are not my favorite when used for any reason other than to convey purposeful time-lapse rather than for aesthetics reasons.

The narration is a bit uneven, and at times, strangely paced, without the cohesive editorial structure that BBC is so good at. My guess is that it has been translated to English for this package, as the series most likely was originally produced in Spanish (though this is only speculation based on the CIN-TV and almost strictly Latin American credits). This would account for narration lines that seem to repeat verbatim back to back at times, and descriptions and analysis that, though correct, are a bit off in word choice. It should be noted that, very much to the discredit of the distributors (Questar) there are no subtitles. This is a major packaging flaw, especially for a documentary, and one which could potentially be useful as an educational tool. In my opinion, not including subtitles in a global documentary series is unacceptable and does a huge disservice to the directors and producers. The blu-ray discs are mastered at 1080i, which can be noticeable at times, and there is some distracting banding on random deep ocean shots, where color mastering and compression are at fault, but overall the image quality is very clean and colors crisp and accurate.

Overall, this product is well worth viewing at the Amazon price, though I could not recommend it at the suggested retail price. As a wildlife documentary buff, I tend to be hyper-critical of the production values and intentions of a film. I appreciate that this series exists at all, as the use of HD to actually create a planned purposeful program rather than to display pretty images is sorely lacking in the market. Though the series does, understandably fail to reach the levels of productions from larger companies, I believe it has maximized its resources and potential to deliver something commendable. This was not thrown together with found footage, gimmicky editing, and the lack of direction that plagues American television documentary titles. Surely CIN-TV did not have the $10 million used to make BBC's "Blue Planet" or the $25 Million allowed for "Planet Earth," yet their enthusiasm for the series and professional approach to the content is evident.