Cute But Chaotic, Happy Feet Can't Out-Pedal Cars

The first I heard of Happy Feet was probably about a year ago, when a friend of mine played me a preview and informed me that this was a movie that made life worth living. At least, he expected it would be, given the fact that the preview filled him with happiness. Buoyed by his enthusiasm, I anticipated the movie with excitement, but its opening passed without me getting to the theater, and days turned into weeks and then months. I still wanted to see it, but in his absence, my passion for the film subsided, and I figured it was another one for the rental queue.

But a couple days ago, I was invited to see it, as it had lingered at our dollar theater and I wasn't the only one who failed to catch it at full price. I confess some of the sense of confusion I felt throughout the film could be attributed to the fact that we got into the movie after it started. How long, I'm not sure; I don't think it could've been more than three or four minutes, but we did miss a bit of set-up. However, we did see when Mumble, the adorable little penguin featured in so much of the film's advertising, discovers he can't sing.

If you saw The March of the Penguins - and Happy Feet almost seems to operate under the assumption that you did - you'll recall that Emperor Penguins find their mates by listening for their unique call. They operate by sound rather than sight, which is what audiences have to do to some extent in this movie, since it's pretty hard to have several penguin characters with unique physical characteristics. We identify the birds mostly by sound, and they assert their individuality through their "heart songs". Their entire culture revolves around music, with chicks learning from the earliest age that singing is a key component to their survival. So Mumble is in trouble, even though he's a fantastic tap dancer. He just doesn't fit the mold.

Mostly, Happy Feet is a typical Rudolph-type story about an outcast who makes good, managing to use the characteristic that causes him to be ostracized as a means by which to do something heroic. But Mumble's quest is meant to have consequences that extend beyond the confines of the movie. The fish are dying. Noah (Hugo Weaving), the crotchety Scottish elder who leads Mumble's group of penguins, blames the little dancer for the food shortage. Our young hero knows that can't be true, and an encounter with a traumatized sea bird convinces him that the explanation must lie far away with the fabled "aliens". So while the story is part coming-of-age tale and part romance (with Gloria, a spunky young penguin with the best singing voice in the colony), it also becomes a plea for ecological awareness that gets a little trippy once Mumble comes face-to-face with these strange creatures, who are actual live-action people. I really think that green message is the reason this film took the Oscar for best animated movie; in terms of overall quality, Cars should have beaten Happy Feet hands-down.

The film boasts an all-star voice cast, which helps with differentiating the characters, though I didn't recognize all of the actors when I heard them. Elijah Wood stars as Mumble once he hits young adulthood, which happens disappointingly quickly; I think the advertising was a bit misleading here, as it seemed to focus primarily on itty bitty Mumble (Elizabeth Daily), leading me to believe the majority of the film featured him as a chick. Of course, he still looks chick-like throughout the rest of the film; though he's larger, he matures more slowly than most of his peers and still hasn't lost his baby fuzz. Moreover, his voice has a very juvenile quality to it. Still, he is an adult, as is Gloria, who I can't take too seriously as the most silky-voiced penguin of them all when she's voiced by Brittany Murphy, whose tonal quality has always screeched "nails on a chalkboard" to me. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman fare better as maternal Norma Jean and Elvis-like Memphis, and Robin Williams is over-the-top as always in dual roles: spicy Latino Ramon, a sharp-tongued little penguin from a neighboring colony who garnered most of the film's big laughs, and Barry White-esque, tuft-eared Lovelace, who serves as a guru to the smaller penguins until his "talisman," a series of plastic rings from a six-pack of beer, chokes away his vocal abilities. The latter character also serves as the film's narrator in what seems to be a throwback to Morgan Freeman. Also appearing briefly: an elephant seal voiced by Steve Irwin in his last film role. The end of the credits include a dedication to him, which is especially appropriate given the movie's conservationist bent.

I appreciate what the movie is trying to say, both about embracing our unique qualities and finding solutions to our ecological crises. However, I found Happy Feet to be strange, too dark for young children (especially in one scene involving a vicious leopard seal) and probably too political as well, particularly in its portrayal of Noah as a religious fundamentalist whose backward views threaten to doom his colony. Most of all, I found it too chaotic, with characters - especially Ramon and his four buddies - often speaking over top of one another and with half a dozen different songs going at once. It seemed like the list of songs took up half the credits, and personally I found very few of the renditions to be particularly pleasant. Mostly, they gave me a bit of a headache, though I did find the toe-tapping displays to be visually appealing. The animation quality in general was pretty high, though I still wouldn't rank it up there with any of the Disney / Pixar collaborations.

Happy Feet is a cute movie about a penguin trying to find his place in the world. It's also a film about trying to preserve the wild spaces of the Earth from dangerous human interference. In fact, the blatant environmentalist message reminds me of another film in which Williams took part: Ferngully, an animated movie from the early nineties about a rainforest facing obliteration by an evil force using human machinery as his vehicles of destruction. Both films are pretty dark, but Ferngully has an elegant passion that gets lost in the shuffle of Happy Feet's miasmic music marathon. I'm happy I finally got around to seeing Happy Feet. But I'd also be happy not to see it again.