This Giant Panda is the size of a Brontosaurus.

Admittedly, I haven't paid much attention to IMAX films for years, and must have missed the point when they turned from pure visceral carneval attraction (Rollercoasters! Airplanes! Sharks!) into ... something else. Expecting a documentary, I was surprised to discover "China: The Panda Adventure" was a fictionalized account of one woman's expedition to save a bear family from an evil hunter.

The plot is more sketched than told: there are treacherous rapids to be navigated, rickety bridges to be crossed and leering bandits to be dealt with, but it's all foreplay until we get to see the pandas. Every line of perfunctory dialogue moves us one step closer to the bears, and since the feature is only fifty minutes long, we're neither asked nor can be bothered to get invested in the story. While the cut-out characters ramble on, you can admire the size of the screen and marvel at the way minor details stick out in larger-than-life clarity and enjoy the lush green of the forests that feature prominently as backdrop for most of the film (think "Crouching Tiger" magnified) You can sense the textures of surfaces and smell the wet leaves.

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"The Panda Adventure" is a bit like porno without the sex: there's poor storytelling of the most perfunctory sort, but precious little footage of actual pandas. What we've come to see is strangely absent from the gargantuan screen.

Starring Maria Bello. Directed by Robert Young.