Nature’s Half-Acre

Release Date: July 28, 1951

Watch Date: June 7, 2023

“The strange and wonderful world that lies beneath our feet, under leaf, log and rock, peopled by millions of weird and fascinating creatures. Where dragons the size of ants wage war in a teacup-sized arena and the blooming of a single flower comes with the glory and grandeur of a sunrise. Where life and love, death and destiny, dwell for a moment and Creation’s dawn each day is a never-ending pageant. Highlighted by the ‘Symphony of Spring,’ a thrilling musical treat.”

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    I don’t know if you can tell but Bob and I are together a lot. A ton. As much as we can be. We’re one of “those couples” and we wouldn’t change it for the world. And yesterday, we weren’t able to be together as much as we’d like. Barely at all, honestly. And it was difficult. And we hated it.

    So that was the mood we watched “Nature’s Half-Acre” in. It’s a short film, and even then I’m sure we didn’t pay attention to half of it, too busy talking about our day, the kids, how upset we were that we hadn’t been able to talk throughout our work days. Yes, we are annoyingly clingy.

    This short is basically a trial for “The Secrets of Life” which, just like this movie, spends way too much time showing me gross bugs and plants growing at a rapid rate. True-Life Adventures like to linger, and they never seem to hit the right balance. I think we have two left, but I don’t hold out hope things will change.

    There’s too many caterpillars. I hate caterpillars. Hate them. With a passion. I’m allergic. I think they’re the most disgusting things on the planet, spawns of demons, and butterflies don’t rank much higher to me. And yet, this film seems to want to focus on them for an inordinate amount of time. At first, Bob thought it was funny to tell me they were off the screen so I’d look and be grossed out, but eventually he realized he’d like to go to bed with a happy wife who felt like her stomach wasn’t roiling and he got on team ‘don’t look at gross caterpillars’.

    Like the other True-Life Adventure shorts, this one is pretty inoffensive, and that’s mostly because it doesn’t last long enough to be a bother. Now, if I had to watch a feature-film length version of this, like I have already in the aforementioned “Secrets of Life” documentary, I might be upset by it. As it stands, it was – just like our last few films – nice background noise to a lovely time laughing and messing around with my husband. So I will think fondly of it, even if it is filled with caterpillars.