Thursday, December 14, 2006

Happy Feet

Warning: this post contains spoilers. If you wish to be surprised about the movie Happy Feet, read no more. But seriously, who reading this would desire to be surprised by this movie?

Heidi and I saw Happy Feet recently, being that we were near a movie theatre, and the next show of the seven or eight films I wanted to see was this one. It's clearly the oddest animated movie I've ever seen that got a major release (I've seen some really odd animated movies in my time, but they didn't get much of a release). Heidi likened it to "March of the Penguins: The Musical," and it's pretty darn close for the early part of the show. Here's the crux of the story, which is pretty obvious from the trailers. All emporer penguin have a heart song, which is how they attract a mate. Mumbles is born without the ability to sing, but instead the ability to dance. And he can dance well. But here's the thing: if you're going to have a movie about dancing animals, are penguins really the best choice? Penguins have some really stumpy legs, especially the young penguins. Dancing loses some of it's charm if you can't see anything but the most broad movements.

In this show, Mumbles gets the whole penguin community dancing, except the elders. The elders are focused on their penguin god, and his call to sing and his resultant bounty of fish. There's a drought of fish recently, and the right-wing conservative religious elders assume his sin of dancing is the cause. They force Mumbles to leave, for the heresy of dancing instead of singing. Mumbles seeks out the source of the fish drought, which turns out to be Antarctic fishing by humans (or "aliens" as he and the other Antarctic birds call them), and eventually learns to communicate with humans through his dancing (it's not interpretive dance by any means, it's more of a tap dance, usually to Stevie Wonder). Ultimately, the humans stop fishing in Antarctica, and the fish are restored to their former bounty (it makes marginally more sense in the movie).

But here's the thing. Mumbles can't attract a mate the same way most penguins can, and is forced out of the community by the religious leaders for it. His mother loves him, but his father continues to suggest that he should conform to society's standards. This style of attracting a mate ends up being the way to get in touch with the aliens, who restore the source of nourishment to the community. So, here's what the movie is really about: his sexually deviant behaviour saves the community.

I have to say that this is an interesting movie, but I can't really call it a good one. There's a lot of cool music in it, and the dance scenes are amazing, and Robin Williams leads a group of smaller penguins that are freakin' hysterical. It's incredibly strange, though, and not really in an eye-opening, fresh way; it's more like a "what the hell" way.

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