Happy Feet: A Toe-Tapping Pleasure

The animated film Happy Feet, directed by George Miller, is certainly a very creative and entertaining idea. It almost seems as if George Miller and the other writers, Warren Coleman, John Collee, and Judy Morris watched the 2005 documentary, March of the Penguins, and said to themselves, "Hey! Penguins have such cute naturally rhythmic waddles. What can we do with that? Wouldn't it be cute if penguins could tap dance as well as waddle? I know! Lets make an animated film about singing and dancing penguins!" And thus the animated musical Happy Feet is born!

The plot of the film comes as a surprise being as how the trailers only show penguins dancing, singing, and generally acting goofy. While the plot certainly is cute, makes singing and dancing pertinent to the story line, and is a useful environmentalists cry for red alert, I remain convinced that the plot is merely an excuse for creating singing and dancing penguins.

The film takes us to the very same moment that March of the Penguins takes us to - the season of penguin courtship in the month of March. Only in Happy Feet, we are introduced to a penguin couple, Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman), a spoof on Marilyn Monroe, and Memphis (Hugh Jackman), a spoof on Elvis Presley, who conceive Mumbles (Elijah Wood), an unusual tap dancing baby penguin.

Baby Mumbles must struggle with the conflict of not fitting in with his environment because, after all, penguins don't tap dance; they only waddle. What's more, penguins find their mates by singing to each other and recognizing each other's voices. In the film, the penguins sing to each other pop and rock tunes they call their "heart songs." A penguin's "heart song" is crucial to a penguin's courtship practices, and Mumbles, conceived by Norma Jean and Memphis, ironically, can't sing a tune.

Social ostracism leads Mumbles to find six friends from a colony of shorter, mambo-dancing penguins with Hispanic accents. Later, when the elders blame Mumbles' social differences for the colony's fish famine, Mumbles, joined by his short mambo-dancing friends, goes on a quest to find the "aliens," or human beings, Mumbles believes are actually responsible for the famine. In the end, it is Mumbles' tap dancing abilities that eventually saves the penguins.

The most magnificent attribute of the film is the animation. The animated drawings of the Antarctic look almost real and incredibly beautiful. Viewers can tell that the animators used real footage of the Antarctic found in documentaries like March of the Penguins and other places as well to create their animated Antarctic. It even seems that Miller and the animators used the exact same penguin colony as found in March of the Penguins because the location of the colony in Happy Feet looks identical to the colony's location in March of the Penguins.

The characters, too, in this film are very entertaining. Actors' voices such as Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, and Robin Williams created very believable and entertaining personalities. Also, the music chosen for the film is very creative and well chosen, adding to the entertainment level. Among the songs that can be found in the film are a rendition of "My Way," sung by Robin Williams, Elvis Presley's "Heart Break Hotel," sung by Hugh Jackman, and The Beach Boys' "Do It Again."

One negative point, though, is that the comedy level in this film isn't what it could be. This isn't a laugh-yourself-silly film; it's more like a have fun and keep-on-smiling-film. And the film most decidedly is a lot of fun. All in all, this is a four star level film for its entertainment value and its creative idea. The world needs to see tap dancing penguins!