“It’s summer camp for nerds,” one scientist says, as a handful of researchers set sail for Antarctica’s remote Palmer Station as part of a multidecade study on the effects of climate change in the region. This ship o’ nerds will be collecting data on the dramatic decrease in sea ice and its devastating impact on various local species — particularly the Adelie penguin population, shown being forced to migrate ever southward by warming temperatures. They also study the further-reaching implications of these man-made changes increasingly affecting sea levels, and weather patterns, around the world.
These scientists, and the ship’s crew, are doing admirable and dangerous work. They are not, however, innate narrators or performers, and director Dena Seidel depends too much on them, chronicling extensive descriptions of research equipment and encouraging them to awkwardly ham it up for the camera. The result doesn’t feel likely to hold the average film viewer’s attention, and makes Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” seem like a summer action flick by comparison. But “Antarctic Edge” will make good viewing for science classes of all levels, and ideally inspire a new generation to continue this hardy mission.