Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
1/15/07
There's penguins. They
sing and dance. I'm there. But wait! Days before I saw
Happy
Feet, I caught a TV ad in which I finally noticed the name of the director:
Mad
Max's George Miller! Not that I was totally shocked, as Miller
established his kids' movie credentials with the Babe series.
But the fact that this adorable looking flick is the first modern animated
kid's movie directed by someone famous for quality live-action fare piqued
my interest in a whole new way. And I was not disappointed.
As fans of March of the
Penguins know, all Emperor Penguins attract and know each other through
the singing of unique songs. In Happy Feet, they happen to
be well-known pop songs. Memphis (Hugh Jackman doing Elvis) and Norma
Jean (Nicole Kidman doing Marilyn Monroe) meet in just this way:
she lays an egg and heads back to the shore to get food while he holds
onto the egg through the long, cold winter. Alas, he drops the egg
for a moment, and when the baby hatches, rather than singing like all the
other penguins, Mumble Happy Feet (Elijah Wood)... tap dances. This
is viewed as an abomination by penguin elders like Noah (Hugo Weaving),
who're calling for renewed adherence to the ancient penguin traditions
to bring back the vast supplies of fish that used to live in the ocean.
But a chance encounter with a tagged bird who claims to have been “abducted
by aliens” leads an exiled Mumble, along with a group of Rockhopper Penguins
led by Ramon (Robin Williams) and a fake seer named Lovelace (Williams
again) on an epic quest to find the “aliens” who're stealing the fish.
It would be unfair to spoil
where this quest leads, but suffice it to say that it's the part of Happy
Feet most likely to linger with adult viewers after it's over. It's
a scary, exciting, moving and mind-blowing ride. It might be a tad
too scary for some kids, but the audience I saw it with seemed to bounce
back from their concerns pretty well by the end. It also raises some
big issues about the relationship between the Earth's human and animal
occupants.
But even without its' artful
third act, Happy Feet delivers what the ads promise: adorable
dancing and singing penguins by the dozens and a well-done run through
the familiar Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer formula. The penguin
animation is remarkable, and the motion capture dancing (led by Savion
Glover as Mumble's happy feet) is contagiously cool. Special effects
that mesh the animated world with footage of the real world are also eerily
effective. The device of having the penguins songs be popular songs
may sound mercenary, but it's really necessary to the movie as constructed.
If we didn't recognize the songs instantly and, with them, the characters
who sing them, it would be impossible to keep the volume of penguin knowledge
we're expected to pick up in our heads. Similarly successful is the
device of giving all the Rockhopper penguins Latino names and accents.
The vocal performances are
as strong as we've come to expect from a project of this magnitude, led
by Williams who is a hoot twice over (Lovelace has the rings from a six-pack
of aluminum cans stuck around his neck and has managed to persuade his
fellow penguins that it's a mark of his magical status). Wood is
properly heroic, while Jackman nails both his Elvis impression and Memphis's
conflict over his son's uniqueness. Kidman's celebrity impersonation
skills are also strong, and Weaving sure knows how to sound judgmental.
Brittany Murphy proves to be a great singer as Mumble's love interest.
Happy Feet delivers
the laughs and fun we expect and also has the dark, thoughtful edge of
a classic children's story. Of all this year's animated hits, it's
the one I most expect people to be talking about 20 years from now.
And it's another feather in the cap of one of the movies' most imaginative
and unpredictable directors. |
