My wife and I took the kids to see March of the Penguins last week, that surprise-hit movie about how emperor penguins in Antarctica raise their little ones. All I can say is that it’s an amazing story of perseverance, and one of the finest films I’ve seen in a long time. It includes one of the best movie scenes I’ve ever watched — for those of you who’ve seen it yourselves, it’s the super-short one in which the male penguins all raise their heads at once when they hear the females returning from the sea. Absolutely hilarious and so… human.

Anyway, we liked the movie a lot — and so I eagerly read the “critic’s notebook” in yesterday’s NYT, in which Stephen Holden tries to explain the commercial success of March of the Penguins. Was it the great storyline? The wonderful photography? The moments of humor?

Nope, it’s none of that. Holden speculates that it has become a smash hit because it’s “a response to the Orwellian political climate.” Got that? People are taking their kids to a documentary about penguins because 2005 is 1984.

Geez o’Pete! Holden also asks: “Did reality television prepare the way for the new popularity of the documentary?” Well, maybe. Or perhaps it was unreality journalism — you know, the phenomenon of not being able to trust what you read in a newspaper staffed by Jayson Blair’s old colleagues.