Film
Happy Feet
- Director
- George Miller
- Certificate
- U
- Running Time
- 108 mins
There are times when you yearn for Nick Park’s Feathers McGraw: the pleasingly mute yet effortlessly sinister penguin from The Wrong Trousers. In Happy Feet, the penguins never shut the fuck up. And since Hollywood seems to have adopted these adorable waddling beaksters as vehicles for its heavy-handed morality tales, adults and nippers alike now have to endure being harangued by flightless birds. George (Babe: Pig in the City) Miller uses motion capture technology to ape the striking visuals of March of the Penguins for this story of a tap-dancing nipper, which abruptly morphs into a clunky lecture about global warming, over-fishing and the misery of wild animals incarcerated in zoos before bottling out big time for an upbeat ending.
Having been dropped as an egg, young Mumble (Elijah Wood) emerges from his shell with a terpsichorean urge and an inability to hold a tune. This proves something of a disappointment to his Elvis impersonator father Memphis (Hugh Jackman), though mum Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman, doing Monroe) is rather more supportive. In what might be interpreted as a swipe at March, god-fearin’ Emperor penguin elder Noah (Hugo Weaving, apparently impersonating Billy Connolly where an Ian Paisley-esque bellow might have been more appropriate) denounces the boy’s “pagan display”, which he blames for the acute fish shortage. Mercifully, just as we’re getting bored with the endless technically impressive scenes of penguins singing disco and hip-hop songs, which might have been fun for a pop video but quickly loses its novelty value, along comes Robin Williams to save the film. How often have you read that sentence, eh? He voices both the leader of a bunch of stumpy, incongruously Latino-accented Adelie penguins and a Barry White-esque rockhopper love guru, whom Mumble joins in his quest to track down the ‘aliens’ who’ve really taken all the fish.
It’s at this point that Happy Feet takes that abrupt turn into eco-proselytising with a Madagascar-in-reverse twist depicting captive penguins as zombies robbed of their minds and dignity, which wouldn’t be so bad if Mr. Miller had the courage of his convictions. But having painted himself into a narrative corner, he comes up with an absurd feelgood ending whose message seems to be that animals must turn themselves into performing freaks in order to win the right to feed.
is needed now More than ever
This free outdoor screening in Millennium Square is an event organised by Big Screen Bristol. Go here for more info.
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