Bug documentary crawls onto screen

This documentary is not for the squeamish. It's filled with the kind of creepy, crawly creatures that keep Orkin in business.

Microcosmos is an interesting, if somewhat lengthy, documentary on the insect world, complete with guest appearances by a carnivorous plant and an arachnid.

Remarkable in its technological feats and less informative than simply fascinating, the film offers a close-up view of miniature life.

Some of the sequences are less compelling than others. Insects feeding their young and butterflies coming out of their cocoons have all been filmed before, though probably not as beautifully as in Microcosmos.

One of the best scenes shows the plight of a dung beetle striving to roll a dung ball up a hill. The beetle continuously loses his grip and the ball rolls back down the hill, the beetle following close behind. Just when he manages to scale the hill, the ball gets firmly planted on a twig, giving the beetle an entirely new Herculean task.

It's amazing that the film can make a protagonist that tiny without having to animate it and give it a singing voice.

Most of the movie follows among much of the same lines, with jousting insects, insects making love and a frightening scene of a spider capturing its insect prey.

Frustratingly, the movie offers no narration or explanation of what these sequences are until the closing credits. Instead of narration, the film gives music cues that set the mood of the scene. Sometimes it works, but most times not.

Some scenes don't really need any narration. There's a certain gracefulness in its absence, but, generally, the film leaves the audience in the dark.

It doesn't help that Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient) opens and ends the film with some poetic rhetoric about the passing of time in a different world beneath our feet. Whatever, just show the clips.

Still, the movie is entertaining and interesting enough to hold the audience's attention for most of its 80-minute running time, time-lapse photography and all.

Microcosmos is playing at 7 and 9:15 p.m. tonight and tomorrow in 101 Chambers.