DVD Movie Review :: Happy Feet :: Entertainment.WebWorlds-One.com ::

The animated film has suffered greatly in recent years, especially that venerably classic style that Disney made so popular. The quietly allegorical, musically delightful, epically entertaining masterpieces of Disney’s hand drawn days are dead and so far the only studios that have been able to even come close to making as good of films are Pixar and Studio Ghibli in Japan. Shrek is too much of an anomaly, born of its genius stars and premise to include, especially in light of Dreamworks’ failed attempt to create anything similarly entertaining.

However, this last year, Warner Bros. of all studios came at us with a surprisingly touching and prescient story about a dancing penguin. The film, Happy Feet, was an immense success because it managed to do what no other animated film, including the newest offering from Pixar this year, the lackluster Cars, was able to. It was entertaining for all ages and didn’t try to be anything more than what it was.

The film’s premise is simple and surprisingly political when one peels away only a layer or two of narrative. A closed society exists, that of the Emperor Penguins, in which the only important thing, the religion of these penguins, is singing. Each penguin is taught to find his or her song so that they can grow up and find their mate, the singular – and in this case top 40 inspired – song capturing their soul mate.
As you can imagine, the film is chock full of popular music and toe tapping beats, each penguin offering his or her own addition to the mix. The first scene of the film is a musical number, and the finale as well. Everything in between is a mixture there of.

However, when Memphis, the Elvis crooning penguin and father of our protagonist, gets carried away and drops his egg, something horrible happens. Baby Mumble doesn’t have a song. He sounds awful in fact. Furthermore, he has a habit of dancing, the Gregory Hines derived show tapping of Broadway no less, when he’s happy, causing his father great disappointment and embarrassment. Not only is he ostracized from his fellow penguins, he looks completely different from them, having never shed his childhood feathers. His one true love, Gloria is essentially the best singer in his “class” or generation, but he has no chance as every time he opens his mouth, all that comes out is a sickening squawk.

The film follows Mumble as he attempts to win the approval of his fellow penguins and find out who is taking all the fish from their feeding grounds (something his horrible dancing is blamed for). The tale of human incursion and destruction of natural resources that follows feels almost too political for its place in a children’s movie, but it fits no less and does a wonderful job of playing off of the themes of tolerance and acceptance that make up the rest of the film.

When Mumbles wins the penguins amnesty from the humans through his dancing he proves himself worthy and impresses the humans into salvaging the Antarctic fishing grounds. The film is a lot of things, and at times it feels as though it’s trying to be all of them too thoroughly, but as a whole most of them work.

The children are entertained by the story of an outcast with a special ability using his tenacity and will power to overcome adversity and save his fellow penguins. At the same time, the entire film is an allegory for how we treat each other and try to blame that which we don’t understand for the short comings of the world. Add to that the obvious ecological commentary and the final scenes of the film and you have a striking message for the parents as well.

But most of all, it’s just fun. The dancing and singing of the penguins along with the antics of the smaller, ‘south of the border’ penguins is a lot of fun. The action scenes are superbly animated and when the non-animated humans stand next to the CG penguins, it still fits. It’s a beautifully crafted movie. It’s true that this film would never have existed without the success of March of the Penguins but it does exist and it does a good job at nearly everything it attempts to do. Of this year’s animated fare, this film by far deserves to have won the Oscar for best animated film, surpassing Cars not only in the manner in which it treats its subject manner, but in its respect for the audience.

[ Back to top ]

About The Author

I'm a self avowed unemployed writer, working on semi-constant basis to try and overcome the need to go and work a real job. I've written more than 200 articles and reviews and am constantly scouring the internet for any and all excuses and methods to make myself less dependent on corporate pay days. Visit my website at TheChatfield.com