George Miller received a lot of much-deserved praise for his Mad Max movies, films that showed how well the man can tell a good car-based action movie with all the flair and excitement he could, particularly when he started with no real money and had to do everything as inexpensively as he could. Likewise, he has also made some well-regarded kids movies, such as 2006’s Happy Feet.
Making action flicks and kids movies could probably also describe Robert Rodriguez, but that’s probably about all those two directors have in common.
Told with some rather impressive motion-capture animation, the story follows the adventures of emperor penguin Mumbles (Elijah Wood). Emperor penguins, Robin Williams’s 50s style DJ narrator tells us, all have something called a heartsong, songs which sound an awful lot like human popular music, but which help penguins find their mates. If your song appeals the right way to a potential mate, then you’ve found your soulmate. That’s how it worked for Mumbles’s parents Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman) and his Elvis-ish dad Memphis (Hugh Jackman). However, for reasons unknown, Mumbles can’t sing very well. Instead, he can tap dance. Other emperor penguins don’t seem to know what to make of that. That may not be true for Mumbles’s own love interest Gloria (Brittany Murphy), but for now, Mumbles’s dancing doesn’t work with Emperor penguins.
It does work for other penguin species that sound like Laintinx stereotypes, but that’s all I will say about that.
So, can Mumbles win over not only Gloria but the rest of his community, even his generally embarrassed father Memphis?
Never mind that. Around halfway through, the movie picks up an environmental message when Mumbles gets the idea that the mysterious “aliens” that leave heavy machinery behind or tags on other birds might know why there seems to be so few fish around for the penguins to eat. And despite the seemingly abrupt change in the plot, that changeover actually works, and both the “aliens” and the dancing plots actually play well together as the movie winds down.
I actually had a bit of fun with this. The animation was often gorgeous, minimizing the humanizing that many talking animal cartoons often go for. The penguins can smile, but that seems to be about it. The motion capture aspect also means the dance sequences work out much better than they otherwise might have. Given the limited color pallet that penguins in Antarctica would generally have, it is rather impressive how well the movie made it work, and a part of me wonders how good this might have worked on a big screen in 3D.
Now, it’s not perfect. Mumbles’s “amigos” seem like crude stereotypes, and Williams gives his voice to one of them. That said, the movie also keeps Williams’s presence to a minimum. I do enjoy Robin Williams’s filmography for the most part, but some of his work let him go overboard a bit. The better movies he made kept his presence at the right balance, and Happy Feet almost tilts too far in the wrong direction there. All things being equal, this was a fine movie for kids, with some good music, great dance sequences, and a nice message inside about how we’re treating the world around us.
Grade: B+
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