Review of Happy Feet (2006) by Kenneth E — 18 Nov 2015

Happy feet contained the typical ear-marks of a post 2001-era film for all the wrong reasons. Here are the top three things that annoyed me about this film: 1) Soul-less CG characters. The penguins were stiff, identical, but oh, did they look photorealistic! I understand filmmakers were going for a more Discovery-Channel feel, but this decision greatly reduced my emotional connection with all characters. A more logical approach would have been to make the film more akin to the penguins on Madagascar, which were bursting with expression. Also, major points deducted for cheating, as studio Animal Logic went the cheap route by incorporating live action human footage in Act III instead of attempting to create realistic CG people. 2) A complete mockery of music; the soundtrack was a glorified karaoke party, with much of the songs reminding me more of LA than the arctic wilderness. The only exception would be the amazing group sequence towards the end as Mumble got all the penguins to dance as one unified community. This sequence was amazing. 3) The inevitable inclusion of at least two Lord of the Rings actors for insurance reasons. I hate when so many movies do this.

Besides these three aspects, I also disliked this film because of its unnecessarily intense chase scenes involving killer orcas and seals; my gut feeling is that such scenes were included primarily to compete with the shark sequence in Finding Nemo. They certainly didn't help propel the story to new heights. Also, the film had one huge plot hole which was that dancing was forbidden but singing was not. (Huh??)The simple act of Mumble moving his feet for his own self-enjoyment was seen as a moral sin by the community, and yet penguins could sing their lungs out to Elvis Presley? Is that really more sensible? Things get even more ridiculous once the penguins dive into the water; there, they loop, twirl, swirl.. yes, this is also known as DANCING.

On the positive side, this film had some wonderful and funny vocal performances by the late Robin Williams, including his character "Lovelace," which was my favorite character in the movie. Also, Mumble's journey was fairly epic during the last third of the film, as the little guy set out on a quest to discover the truth about the "aliens." The result to this journey was a deep environmental truth involving overfishing, pollution, animal captivity, and human inabilities to act for the greater good despite being the planet's dominant species. Such a daring conclusion was welcoming, and rarely done in this slapstick era dominated by Shrek and Scrat. For this simple reason, Happy Feet may have brought home the Oscar for Best Animation in 2007.