Happy Feet


I should say first that I took my nephews, ages 13 and 11, to see this movie and they both liked it.

I went with high hopes: there's a lot of big names in this film such as Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brittney Spears, and Robin Williams (no, that wasn't a mistake) so I thought maybe it had some dramatic flair to it.

Nope.

Here's the deal.  It starts out a lot like March of the Penguins, which IS a really good movie.  But then ... 
We discover that tap dancing is a birth defect due to being left in the snow a bit too long. 
Then the head penguin - with an IRISH accent - says that tap dancing is bad, so the young penguin Mumble must sing instead.  HELLO! Did anyone see Riverdance?  Irish.
Then we have this "weird herd" thing going on like in Land Before Time.  Wait, we already did that in the snow, that was Ice Age.
Then we have the penguin in captivity at the zoo.  Free Willy, er, Mumble.
Then we have the environmentalist message for the conclusion.  And here is where the key problem in the movie lies: 
 Al Gore did not have a role in this film.  
If anyone was genetically engineered to play the voice of a penguin, it's the inventor of the internet, and I didn't see his name once in the credits.  (Ok, they went by really fast, so if the Vice  President was listed there and I missed it, I apologize.)  I'm guessing that THAT is what got the all-star cast together.  Save the Penguins.  I think I'd rather watch Star Trek V.

The animation is amazing, so amazing that after awhile it's almost like, "ho, hum, another CGI amazing video sequence."

I'm fairly sure Brittney Spears didn't do the motion capture for her animated penguin.

Posted: Sun - November 26, 2006 at 02:55 PM           | |

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