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Happy Feet Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG (some mild peril and rude humor) Genre: Children, Family Theater release: November 17, 2006 by Fox Searchlight Pictures Directed by: Richard Linklater Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes Cast: Elijah Wood (Mumble), Robin Williams (Ramon / Lovelace / Cletus), Nicole Kidman (Norman Jean), Hugh Jackman (Memphis), Brittany Murphy (Gloria), Hugo Weaving (Noah), Steve Irwin (Kev), Magda Szubanski (Miss Viola) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Have you seen the trailers? Just watching that little penguin dance his heart out makes a person feel good. Combined with a cinematic beauty reminiscent of March of the Penguins and a roster of genuinely funny, vividly drawn characters, Happy Feet will be a winter season smash. It's flawed—there's a clutter of themes and subplots that suggests the screenplay was written by committee, and a layer of smirking sexual innuendo that cheapens the film—but it's fun.

Mumble is a baby penguin who doesn't fit in. Instead of stumping along in the stately, ungainly way of Emperor Penguins, he taps, he skips, he cuts rug. When it comes time for the little ones to find their heart song—"the voice you hear inside, who you truly are"—it turns out that our hero can't sing to save his life. His song is in his feet. And in a world where you are what you warble—"Without our heart song, we can't be truly penguin"—this kid's an outcast.

Norma Jean (voiced by Nicole Kidman), young Mumble (E.G. Daily) and Memphis (Hugh Jackman), one happy family

One day when he's off by himself working out dance moves, Mumble has a run-in with some tough-talking flyer-boys. The leader of this particular pack is also an outsider—he's got a yellow band on his leg, and a paranoid story to go with it. He claims to have been abducted by aliens. When our penguin protagonist finds other traces of human presence in the Antarctic ice, he begins to wonder whether there might be other forces shaping his tribe's destiny besides the mystical "'Guin" invoked by the elders—specifically, whether these mythical "aliens" might know what's really happening to the fish, whose scarcity is endangering life on the ice cap. Eventually the plucky little individualist heads out on the obligatory hero's journey to get to the bottom of things and save the day, and while he starts with his own little fellowship of the Arctic circle, this feisty fine-feathered Frodo (voiced by Elijah Wood) eventually goes it alone.

The theme of do-your-own-thing nonconformity is an odd fit in a setting where survival depends on group co-operation. The tough old birds who lead the flock know the only way to survive the long bitter winter blizzards is to huddle together, taking self-sacrificial turns on the wind-whipped outer ring before moving to the center of the great mass of birds: "Do you not understand that we can only survive here when we're in harmony?"

Mumble (Elijah Wood) and the Amigos slide down a mountainside at top speed

What a shame to see so powerful an image of co-operation and interdependence turned into the hackneyed Hollywood formula where age, tradition and community can only exist as coercive forces of repression to be rebelled against. How doubly disappointing that the Scot-inflected elders (Presbyterian penguins?) phrase their maxims in Christian language about sin, backsliding and repentance. Of course, the filmmakers want to have their fish-cakes and eat them too: after two hours of conformity to the American cult of individualism, the credits roll to an eco-friendly anthem about "one world, united." So are we in this thing on our own? Or would it be kinda smart to work together on this one?

Which is not to disparage the film's environmental concerns: when we finally encounter human beings and their detritus, this mixed-up, happy little cartoon finds moments of unexpected cinematic power. Images of industrial wreckage and factory ships evoke similar sequences in that other astonishing bird doc, Winged Migration, and human characters are rendered with a haunting visual poetry—viewed through this bird's eye, we are numb, preoccupied creatures in the grip of a terrible indifference. The tale's happy resolution can't quite wipe away that remarkable, lingering vision of our alienated humanity.

Gloria (Brittany Murphy) and Mumble dance to the music

As fun as it is, Happy Feet tries to be too many things to too many audience members. As well as the heroic outsider story that turns into your standard-issue quest caper, there's a love story (which predominates the first two-thirds of the film before being dropped), a father-son alienation subplot, a whole multi-cultural chaos that's fun but maybe a bit contrived, and way too many pop culture references. Some are weirdly irrelevant to the story in a way that suggests they're "we can't cut that!" fossils from early screenplay drafts which they definitely could have cut: there's cleverness, but what possible significance, to Mumble's parents being named Memphis—yeah, Elvis, we get it—and Norma Jean?

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