Thursday, April 19, 2007

Movie Review - Happy Feet

Happy Feet (3 of 5): This is a rather bizarre movie about a penguin who can’t sing (huuhh?). Instead, he is a really good dancer (umm, WTF am I watching here?). Ostracized from his community, the penguin goes on an adventure with some other penguins to make contact with the “aliens” (humans) and find out why the fish supply is dwindling. News to me, but apparently adventures of this kind in the Antarctic require a lot of song and dance routines to unusual selections of music (sorry, nothing of JTs) and interaction with a variety penguins with some variant of Robin Williams' voice. Yes, truly, the Antarctic is a strange and wondrous place!

The music routines are hit and miss, but overall are fun. The animation is excellent. I was especially impressed by the wide screen shots of the penguin colonies. The story could have been a little tighter, cutting at least 15 minutes from the film. Unfortunately, late in the movie, the environmental message becomes both preachy and cheesy, leading to an ultimately muddled message that many kids will probably overlook. Overall this movie was just okay, surprisingly beating the far superior Monster House for Best Animated Feature at the 2007 Oscars.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just watched it. I thought is was so-so when it comes to kid movies. 3 of 5. I loved the Prince songs.

Anonymous said...

are we talking about the same movie here?????? Happy Feet has a great message behind, wonderful music and it's funny. In case you didn't know penguins are consider a bird, all bird can sing! (in case u never read a book) and but because of his egg being drop he got mess up and now can dance instead.... but w/e it is the message is great is all about being ACCEPTED even though u might be different than others! so maybe watch it again...

Unknown said...

My kids loved this movie. Animations were mind blowing in this movie. Its a great movie for kids.
Happy Feet