CinePhillyist Reviews: Happy Feet

Okay. Movie snob here. Seriously. Give me subtitles. Give me handheld cameras. Give me just about anything playing at one of the Ritz theatres.

But once in a while? Give me a cartoon. About animals. Something where the characters are so cute that you want to jump through the movie screen into the film, and cuddle with them. That’s what Happy Feet is. One hour and forty-five minutes of adorableness. Singing, dancing penguins. Fluffy little baby penguins.

Of course, adorableness can only get you so far. Humor helps—and having Robin Williams in your cast especially helps. I definitely walked out of Happy Feet ready to quote it. And ready to go to Camden and steal a penguin. (Unfortunately, due to a work conflict, my companion and I had to miss the pre-film festivities, at which a few penguins were apparently visiting. Sigh…) The dancer in me loved that Savion Glover was the penguins’ motion capture dancer (that’s choreoanimator, for all you Sports Night fans out there). I loved that the people in the movie were played by real people. I really loved watching the film on the Franklin Institute’s IMAX screen. What I actually didn’t love, though, was how heavy-handed and dark the plot could get. This is supposed to be a cartoon for chrissake. Not an anthropomorphic combination of Footlose and FernGully. (The plot goes, you dance, so you’ll never be accepted by our very religious society…and after being told that dancing is evil, you’ll then journey into nature to discover how very precious it all is.) At points, the film could get especially plot-heavy and boring, especially if you’re a five year old who came to see the dancing penguins. There were scarier moments that even made me jump (again, it was IMAX) and that make it slightly less suitable for little ’uns.

BUT, despite that (and some of my normal cartoon criticisms, like “how can the penguins talk to the seals but not to the people?”), I really enjoyed this movie, and its all-star cast. Hugh Jackman was hilarious as an Elvis-type husband to Nicole Kidman’s almost unrecognizable breathy Marilyn Monroe. Robin Williams narrates the film and voices two characters. Elijah Wood does his thing as Mumble, the dancing penguin, and Brittany Murphy shows the world that she can sing (even if she sometimes sounds like she chose to smoke a pack of cigarettes rather than warm up for her high notes). The soundtrack cracked me up from minute one and might even be worth buying, even if they did clean up Prince’s “Kiss” a little too obviously. And, oh yeah, have I mentioned how ADORABLE the baby penguins are? I have? Well then, consider yourselves reminded.

Image via Worst Previews.