A worthwhile if inevitably ungainly hybrid of An Inconvenient Truth, March of the Penguins and an episode of The Littlest Hobo, Arctic Tale undermines its compelling views of the far north and urgent message about climate change with some archaic and questionable nature-film tactics. Though assembled from 15 years’ worth of arctic footage shot and collected by Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson, a husband-and-wife filmmaking team based on Vancouver Island, it’s not really a documentary so much as a fictional narrative constructed from real events caught on camera. In other words, the two protagonists — Nanu, a polar bear cub, and Seelu, a walrus pup — are “played” by many animals filmed over the years. (It’s kinda like how it took two Olsen twins to play one ugly child on Full House.)

While this strategy is not so far out of the ordinary for wildlife filmmaking, it becomes more problematic when coupled with the filmmakers’ anthropomorphization of their subjects. (The narration by Queen Latifah makes the critters seem even sassier.) Yet the challenges faced by these animals are true and not a little terrifying, with Arctic Tale providing dramatic evidence of a badly troubled ecosystem. If it takes the trappings of an adventure story and a few fart jokes to alert a wide audience to the crisis, then so be it. Maybe the situation demands a little less Marlin Perkins and a little more Michael Moore.

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