"March Of The Penguins" Is Not A Documentary

The New York Times does a feature on the annual absurdities of the Oscar documentary film category. But they fail to mention one salient point: the presumed frontrunner (according to them) is "March of the Penguins." (I'd say it's not, because the biggest commercial hits rarely get nominated and almost never win.) But of course, "Penguins" is NOT a documentary. It's a fictional film that -- in most of the world -- used nature footage to tell a fictional story, complete with actors dubbing dialogue over the shots of penguins. ("Mama, it ees so cooold!") In the US, they simply removed the dialogue and slapped on some banal commentary filled with pseudo-science that ignored the events on screen. If "March of the Penguins" is a documentary, so is "Benji" and "The Incredible Journey."