In real estate the famous saying is that it’s all about location, location, location.
In Hollywood it’s all about timing.
Hot on the heels of March of the Penguins and playing on screens a couple doors down from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient truth. Warner Brothers took advantage of a momentarily aware audience and the always-quick-to-self-congratulate liberal Hollywood “Cause Crusaders” to collect big awards and even bigger box office with Happy Feet.
Happy Feet is the story of outcast penguin, Mumble (Elijah Wood) who dances like Gene Kelly, yet sings like an early audition round idol contestant and is shunned by his own kind because singing is the foundation of their whole society, from mating to worship. Fueled by his need for acceptance Mumble decides to prove his worth to the other penguins by setting out on a quest to find out why all the fish are disappearing. Mumble eventually ends up in a zoo where he tap-dances for the humans, which for some reason convinces the world superpowers to initiate a ban on deep-sea fishing.
That is one of the major problems with this film.
Our oceanic ecosystem is in a very real state of crisis. And it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a furry flightless bird doing a soft shoe to send Charlie the Tuna into retirement. Outside of a few whining penguins we’re never given any real image or impression of just how grave the situation is. It is never really clear whether this is a film about social acceptance or environmental responsibility because neither storylines are ever fully developed. The real shame here is that the makers of this film, headed up by Mad Max director George Miller, who has some experience working talking animals having been a producer on both Babe movies, had an opportunity to send an important message to an impressionable audience, but instead chose to use the devastating effect of industrial fishing for a cheap tug at the heartstrings and claim their social responsibility badge.
Despite some jaw-dropping animation, one of the other major issues that this film struggles with is the design of its characters. We are subjected to an alarmingly high amount of talking animal movies. Though a great many of them seem the same, there is one constant that has always served this genre well. And that is the “humanisms” drawn into the faces of the characters. Often with slight similarities to the very people who are performing the voices. In a bold, and ultimately regrettable, move Miller decided to go with a realistic visual depiction of all the penguins, with the exception of the main character and a few of the friends that he makes along the way. Unfortunately penguins are one of nature’s least facially expressive creatures. Thus, every time they speak or interact with each other it just comes off as bad Mr. Ed.
This is not helped by some of the worst voice work in recent memory. Elijah, Nicole Kidman (Mumbles mother), Hugh Jackman (Mumbles dad) and Britney Murphy are all horribly miss-cast and Robin Williams’s shtick is just tired. Though, in their defense, these normally brilliant actors aren’t given very much to work with in terms of a script that feels a great deal as if it had been cut and pasted together with ideas shouted around the table of a boardroom brainstorming session.
The picture and sound quality of the DVD is decent, but nothing to sing and dance about.
The special features range from the standard trailers and cut scenes to the outrageously bizarre vintage animated short “I Love to Singa”. A Chuck Jones animated, Merry Melodies cartoon about a young owl who gets ostracized from his oddly Jewish seeming family of classical music loving owls because he prefers to sing Jazz music which is characterized as being “Black Music”. An idea driven home when as the young owl is auditioning for the Jack Bunny show, he presents himself as Owl Jolson.
Seriously, what the heck were they thinking including this on the DVD.