Happy Feet

Happy Feet

I knew going into the movie that this was a kid movie about dancing penguins. I went into the movie wanting to hate it. Here’s the surprise, I enjoyed the movie. It’s a fun movie, and the music is very good. The movie forced me to smile more than a few times.

The movie is about a colony of Emperor Penguins, and their way of meeting each other is to sing big song numbers, but dancing is forbidden. Mumble (Elijah Wood) is one penguin that’s different than the other ones, because he likes to dance but can’t sing. Of course the dancing forces him out of his community, and he goes out on his own. This is when he meets up with some smaller penguins and they befriend him.

For a kids’ movie, I was shocked how well written the movie was overall. The animation is so spot-on that you can see Elijah Wood’s facial expressions on Mumble’s face. The landscape shots are truly amazing, but that’s always where CGI shines anyway. The dance and song numbers are what everyone will come into the movie for, but they will get more out of the movie with the overall environmental message.

The environmental storyline takes over the second half of the movie, as does John Powell’s very Zimmer like score. There were places when I thought Powell broke into Zimmer’s office and stole his sheet music. However the score is good, and fits some of the epic moments in the second half of the film.

And it is the second half of the film where some of the storyline problems show up. The movie feels like it ran out of time and rushed itself to the ending. The movie should have had a better/fuller conclusion, but don’t let the rushed ending take you away from seeing this movie. It’s a cute and fun movie with a great message about being yourself no matter what people tell you. Sometimes, it’s alright to be an outsider.

Grade B

March of the what?