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I don't know. I was a little underwhelmed with it myself, but simple lifecycle documentaries have been done so many times that they are hard to make interesting.
I think there were three factors here that made it successful in English:
1) It was beautifully shot. That was definitely a step up from your normal Animal Planet/PBS life cycle doc.
2) It did expose a quirk of nature with which most peole were unfamiliar and it just seems so odd. Simultaneously it seems an argument against natural selection and intelligent design. In other words, it reminds people that the world is sometimes stupidly wacky.
3) When it was redone for the U.S. market they completely changed the narration to be straight narration. In the original French version the narrators were the voices of the penguins (yes, apparently the penguins talked). I haven't seen both version but know people who have; apparently the original is kind of lame because of that.
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