James Cameron's Aliens Of The Deep has a fairly silly title. Also, while it's a documentary, it is often directed and edited with an overbearing style one might expect to find in a summer action film; an urgent score provides all the requisite surges and stingers. And in between the scientific factoids, the film's human subjects spout dialogue that, while perhaps not exactly scripted, certainly doesn't sound natural.

I list these quibbles, so that I may get them out of the way. Call it a film critic's guilt that I have to bring them up in the first place, because they're easy enough to ignore in light of the film itself. This is a wondrous experience, a brilliant convergence of technological advancement and good old fashioned nature. Whereas similarly themed programs on The Discovery Channel might offer insight and admiration regarding the complexities of various life forms on this planet, Aliens Of The Deep offers a genuine, and quite moving, sense of awe.

The film documents Cameron and his crew of scientists as they take four tiny submarines into hydrothermal vents deep within the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, two and a half miles below the surface. These are places that sunlight has never penetrated, where the history of the earth's formation is traceable through geological formations the size of skyscrapers and where chimneys of rock spout plumes of boiling black smoke, hot enough to melt the submarines, into water that's below freezing. Floating, swarming, swimming in and around these toxic environments are literal blankets of life; blind shrimp that devour the bacteria in the chemical eruptions, enormous squids and jellyfish and six foot long tube worms that spout retractable red plumes, all existing -- thriving -- in a complex symbiotic ecosystem.

The theory the film illustrates is that, if complex organisms can survive without a single amenity necessary to life as we know it, they can offer scientists a clue as to how alien life might exist on hostile planets. A case in point is made for Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, which scientists believe is a primarily oceanic planet covered in a thick layer of ice. A computer generated sequence suggests how the technology used to explore the seas on earth could be adapted to dig through the frozen surface of that moon and explore the waters below. If the concept seems too far fetched to be possible, consider that there was a time when exploring the depths of our own planet was just as prohibitive a notion. Technology always catches up with the imagination, it seems.

And what better proof of that than the science used to make this film! Cameron again uses the 3D camera systems he developed for his last underwater documentary, Ghosts Of The Abyss. Now, when I reviewed that film, I remember only being mildly impressed by the imagery. This is because the best parts of the movie -- the exploration of the wreckage of the Titanic, via a camera mounted in a self propelled robot named Jake -- were filmed on tiny digital cameras, whose images aren't exactly suited for 3D, especially when blown up to fill the IMAX screens. Here, the overall technology itself hasn't changed much and Jake makes another appearance, but his little cameras are scarcely used; the vast majority of this film was photographed in stereo high definition. It is simply glorious. This is the perfect utilization of the technology: putting the viewers into these worlds is far more thrilling than all the rollercoaster train rides in The Polar Express. There's a scene in which a massive jellyfish floats towards you, past you, enveloping you in its translucent membrane, and the only possible reaction, towards the animal's very form and also its very palpable presence, is astonishment. I found myself laughing with joy at some of these sights, enabled by the 3D to share in the sense of discovery.

Towards the end of the movie, another CGI sequence depicts the same group of scientists in a futuristic submarine, exploring the depths of an alien planet. They come across an apparently sentient lifeform, which extends a tentacle to the glass of the ship; the old visual cliche of making contact with an extraterrestrial lifeform is in full sentimental swing here, and it's a somewhat silly sequence (especially when the camera pans away to reveal a vast underwater city, right out of Cameron's The Abyss -- how did these octopus aliens build that?) that is nonetheless substantiated by the actual science of the film. And, perhaps, it's not even that unlikely a situation: my favorite scene in the film involves the discovery of a tiny white octopus that curiously swims towards the submarine; then, having never seen human life or mechanical forms before, what does it do? It reaches out and grabs the arm of the submarine.

A moment like that is more thrilling than anything in Terminator 2, more moving than anything in Titanic. Cameron is open about his love for the ocean, and with these slightly pandering but totally enthralling documentaries (which are, I should note, made with young audiences in mind -- and young audiences will respond in full, so parents take heed), he's positioning himself as a 21st Century Jacques Cousteau. I mentioned that the title of the film was a bit cheesy, and suddenly I'm struck with a new, equally silly but completely appropriate idea: The Life Aquatic With James Cameron.