In “Penguins,” the beautiful but frustratingly shallow Disneynature documentary, Ed Helms provides the internal monologue for a 5-year-old Adélie penguin referred to as Steve, who is about to embark on his first mating season. Helms explains that if Steve hopes to thrive in the Antarctic spring and summer, he must find a mate, procreate and provide food to keep his new family alive.

The camera follows Steve as he waddles through extraordinary vistas filled with cliffs backlit by a sun that never sets and ice floes rocked by the tempestuous waves of the Southern Ocean. These are precious glimpses of a vibrant ecosystem, one under severe threat because of ocean warming. But the pressure to build a family-friendly narrative out of these images diminishes the observational accomplishments of the directors, Alastair Fothergill and Jeff Wilson. As a result, nature’s complexities are reduced here to dull clichés.