Not so Happy Feet

Why I agreed to see this movie with my niece after having read this review by Ty Burr of the Boston Globe, I will never know...but after having seen it, I could not think of better words to describe this film. I give it a D-.

What do you get when you cross "March of the Penguins," Disney's "High School Musical," "The Ugly Duckling," a runaway jukebox, "Footloose," Joseph Campbell, "Riverdance," a Greenpeace board meeting, and five hits of prime, Woodstock-era brown acid? You get "Happy Feet," the new computer-animated family film that is quite simply the most bizarre thing under the Antarctic sun. Is it any good? I'm still figuring that out.


The posters and trailers are selling the movie as a feel-good comedy for the toddler set. It's not. While the youngest audiences will be charmed by the opening scenes of Emperor Penguins singing high-voltage renditions of baby boomer hits, and they'll coo with delight at the adorable li'l fuzzballs that subsequently hatch, "Happy Feet" takes a turn for the seriously intense after that. The penguins meet the enemy, and in the words of Pogo, he is us.


One of those fuzzballs is named Mumble (voiced by "Rugrats" regular E.G. Daily as a baby and by Elijah Wood as a barely molted adult). While his young peers are instructed that they each have to find their own personal "heartsong" -- all of which come straight from oldies radio -- Mumble can muster only a squawk. Instead, he's a born tap - dance artiste, the Savion Glover of the ice shelf (in fact, it's Glover's motion-captured feet and moves we're seeing), and when he gets his groove on, the other hatchlings thunderingly join in.


Unamused, the grown-up birds boot Mumble out of the pack. Journeying into exile, he joins up with a group of nattering Adelie penguins , led by one with the voice of Robin Williams. Inexplicably, these guys all talk with Hispanic accents, and Williams also plays a blustering, overweight Rockhopper penguin with a gospel croon. He's having fun and the kids will too, but this second-banana Speedy Gonzalez stuff feels moldy and embarrassing -- the Hollywood equivalent of racial profiling.


Besides, any reasonably sentient adult may already be in a coma from the film's full-throttle kitsch. The notion of CGI penguins performing a mating dance while singing a Las Vegas version of Prince's "Kiss" is not easy to get one's brain around. Mumble's father (Hugh Jackman) is an Elvis dude whose heartsong is "Heartbreak Hotel," his mama (Nicole Kidman) a Marilyn Monroe birdie down to the mole. When she leaves dad sitting on the egg, he whispers "Goodbye, Norma Jean," the penguin chorus kicks into "Never Can Say Goodbye," and your jaw hits the floor.


At the same time, you're registering that "Happy Feet" is one of the most visually ravishing CGI films yet rendered. The young penguins' first foray into the ocean is a remarkable underwater ballet, part Busby Berkeley , part Blue Angels; the animators ' use of light and color fits the end-of-the-world majesty of the setting. The movie's an uncategorizable mixture of the tacky and profound, and on some weird level, you have to respect it.


To its credit, too, "Happy Feet" understands that nature is red in beak and fang. There are attacks on Mumble and his pals by skua , seal, and killer whale, all of whom mean business; the seal especially is a slavering carnivore purged of all cuteness. Five- year- olds with delicate constitutions will cower under the seats while their hardier siblings will shriek with excitement and save the nightmares for later.


More to the point, "Happy Feet" sees the animals at the top of the food chain -- that's you and me -- as capable of the most long-term damage, and it sends its hero trudging across the tundra on a journey of mythic impact to right the matter. Even without the regular camera pullbacks to view the earth as a small cosmic marble, the movie's vantage point is planetary.
But it's a comedy, too, and often a funny one -- and a musical that spills over with demented exuberance. Who's responsible for this mash-up? George Miller, the Australian creator of the "Mad Max" movies, the writer and producer of "Babe," and (here's the relevant item) the director of the edgy, discomfiting "Babe: Pig in the City."


Like that film, "Happy Feet" dives into the darkness with overstuffed brio, and it delivers as much wonder as dissonance. Without giving too much away, there's a key sequence in a big city aquarium that's almost primordially powerful, not least because of the ghostly, preoccupied bipeds on the other side of the glass.


What can get these odd creatures to focus on the havoc they're wreaking? A tap-dancing penguin? A movie about a tap-dancing penguin? Or do we crave only momentary diversion before moving on? At its best and at its worst -- and after a while it's hard to tell the difference -- "Happy Feet" seems hellbent on diverting us into action.