Penguins’ summer of love

Despite a blistering and muggy 106-degree heat index, a small crowd has gathered around the penguin area at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore for a 3 p.m. feeding. As the birds waddle about and snap up little fish, spectators — both adults and children — are giggling. The penguins swim gracefully in school formation, popping up for air now and then, unaware that they may just be the cinema superstars of the summer.

As Tom Cruise and the Fantastic Four battle it out in typical Hollywood style, a small film is capturing the hearts of the nation.

There’s no dialogue, and there are no palm trees and definitely no explosions.

There aren’t even any pretty girls (or any humans, for that matter). It’s just penguins. Lots and lots of penguins. They waddle. They squawk. They love. And the masses are eating it up.

The movie is “March of the Penguins,” narrated by Morgan Freeman and directed by Frenchman Luc Jacquet. It tracks the annual 70-mile trek of the south pole’s emperor penguins as they seek companionship, parenthood and survival in the world’s cruelest climate.

Critics are extolling the painstaking cinematography, while moviegoers find themselves identifying with a bird they probably knew almost nothing about before seeing the movie.

The film opened in New York and Los Angeles on June 24 in just four theaters, grossing $34,000 per screen, a higher average than that of any of the summer’s big blockbusters, including “War of the Worlds.” Since then, it has brought in more and more money each week.

“March” raked in more than $1.5 million this past weekend, almost a 50 percent increase over the previous weekend — in its fourth week of release. (Movies commonly see second-week declines of 50 percent in ticket sales.) Having already grossed more than $4 million in brief, limited release (making it the 11th-highest-grossing documentary ever), “March” today expands to about 700 theaters, still just a small fraction of the number typical for a big-budget movie.

Its success has stunned its distributors, National Geographic Feature Films and Warner Independent Pictures.

“We fell in love with what the movie could be,” says Adam Leipzig, president of production for National Geographic Feature Films. After viewing clips of the pre-edited film in Paris more than a year ago, Mr. Leipzig saw the completed French version of the movie at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. He was smitten.

“We didn’t want to leave Sundance without that movie,” he recalls.

At the time, the film was in French and titled “La Marche de l’Empereur.” National Geographic teamed with WIP, changed the score and brought in Mr. Freeman to narrate. Less than a year later, it’s selling out theaters coast to coast.

How could a documentary, no matter how sophisticated, be drawing such crowds? Some of us haven’t seen a documentary since high school biology class.

“It doesn’t feel like a documentary,” Mr. Leipzig says, “it feels like a big adventure and a wonderful story — and with Morgan Freeman’s storytelling, it’s like your favorite uncle telling you the best story ever told.”

The film’s natural story line is surprising in its urgency, and moviegoers find themselves cheering on the penguins as they risk their lives to keep their eggs, and then their hatched young, safe from subzero temperatures, ice storms and predators. They are “the most committed parents on the planet,” as Mr. Leipzig puts it.

The AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring is showing the film up to six times a day in its largest theater, which seats 400. The newly refurbished cinema was one of the first 20 theaters in the nation to show the film.

Theater staff are delighted with its success, and moviegoers are flocking to the feature, which has proved to be the ultimate family summer film, says Murray Horwitz, AFI Silver director.

“It’s always wonderful when you show a movie and people stop you and say, ’Thank you for bringing this movie,’ ” he says, adding that its charm lies in the film’s “love story” core and word-of-mouth publicity.

“I don’t think you’ve seen a preview of this on TV, and you haven’t seen big ads on the sides of buses,” Mr. Horwitz explains. “That accounts for a lot of its strength.”

Baltimore resident Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen read a review of the film and took his daughter and niece to see it at Baltimore’s Charles Theatre.

“Some of the [camera] shots were extraordinary,” he says, referring to recurring close-ups of the penguins’ heads, eyes and thick coats of feathers. The film’s G-rated but heartbreakingly beautiful “love scene” especially impressed him.

“It showed you emotions we didn’t expect of these creatures,” he says. “It’s quite amazing.”

Those human emotions that the penguins seem to express — their grief-stricken bellows when losing their young to the cold, their need for companionship and their dedication to parenting — may be at the heart of the film’s success.

Plus, well, they’re cute. Undeniably and absolutely cute.

Whether you love them because of “March of the Penguins” (now lovingly called “The Penguin Movie” for short), the mischievous animated penguins from DreamWorks’ “Madagascar” or Simon & Schuster’s recently released children’s book “And Tango Makes Three” — which chronicles the true story of a male penguin couple and their adopted baby penguin in Central Park Zoo — you’re hooked.

“Everybody that comes to the zoo, penguins are one of the animals that they always ask about,” says Gil Myers, supervisor of the African black-footed penguin exhibit at the Maryland Zoo. “They just have this look about them. They’re really inquisitive birds. They’re really fun to watch. The littlest thing can catch their eye.”

Central Park Zoo, also home of the fictitious “Madagascar” penguins, has seen a rise in visitors to its penguins since both movies and the book came out. Even the gift shop is selling out of penguin merchandise, says Kate McIntyre, associate manager of public affairs for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates all New York City zoos.

Unlike “Madagascar,” which had plenty of marketing muscle behind it, “March of the Penguins” is spreading mostly through word of mouth, Mr. Leipzig says.

In the midst of summer movies with budgets of more than $100 million, Mr. Leipzig and his colleagues are proud of their $8 million film made without a single special effect.

“We expected that people would like it,” Mr. Leipzig says, “but never dared to imagine that people would like it this much.”