Arctic Tale, pitched as this summer's March of the Penguins, is a Waddle of the Walruses. While the frozen north has polar bears, arctic foxes, ring seals and walruses, there isn't a penguin to be found in the Arctic.

It's a cute children's documentary about wildlife in the region.

The National Geographic production features an almost-cloying narration and gives its subject animals names, just like the old Disney True Life Adventure films of the 1950s and '60s. It has cute baby animals, walruses passing gas for laughs and is peppered with absurdly obvious pop tunes -- We Are Family, Celebration.

Yet the children's film has a serious subtext: The adorable polar-bear cub Nanu and pudgy walrus pup Sela, whom we meet and follow through the first few years of life, are goners if global warming isn't stopped.

Sarah Robertson's beautifully photographed film takes us under the sea as walruses dig for clams, under the ice where seals flee from hungry bears and into a snow cave where a mother polar bear gives birth to her cubs.

We follow a walrus that grows up in a world where melting ice fields force her herd to swim hundreds of miles to rocky islands rather than hang out on icebergs. We follow a bear chasing the herd as she struggles to catch something to eat because her hunting ground, the ice sheet, is gone earlier each year.

The story, full of life and death, makes terrific infotainment for kids.

Queen Latifah puts a little street sass into the narration, with a walruses "up in everybody's business" here or a who's "large and in charge" crack there. Male walruses sing their mating call under the ice, and it takes a while for that message to sink in with the females.

"These ladies have better things to do with their time."

That last bit is a somewhat annoying theme that runs through the piece. The male polar bears are either aggressive threats or first-to-die weaklings. The male walruses are fit to be ignored. Yes, baby walruses have two mommies (the movie calls this assistant care giver an "auntie"), but selecting the animals to document and the stories told make this a documentary with what one hopes is an accidental but definite gender bias.

Then again, the male penguins were the hero-parents of March of the Penguins.

None of that takes away from stunning shots of nature, closely observed, or the overriding message of Arctic Tale.

See this in a cool theater on a hot summer day. But these scenes of an icy kingdom most of us will never see don't give us relief from the heat.

Scientists, and filmmakers such as Robertson, are sending a warning: The ice is going away.