>>REVIEW
HAPPY FEET
STARRING: Robin Williams, Elijah Wood, Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman
DIRECTED BY: George Miller
Opens Friday, November 17
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Critically, a children’s movie can only pass if it holds up to countless viewings. After all, the second they go to video, these movies will be replayed until the DVD player melts and the songs are forever stuck in parents’ minds like a nightmare merry-go-round. By that standard, anyone exposing their children to Happy Feet should, at the outset, love having capital "I" issues drilled into their skulls along with ’80s pop hits and early ’90s hip hop. Otherwise, duck and cover.
Helmed by director and co-writer George Miller (whose sole children’s movie writing experience comes from the mediocre Babe: Pig in the City), Happy Feet begins on solid ground with the familiar conventions of an ugly duck/penguin tale. Because he isn’t able to find his "heart song," the colony’s pop music mating calls, Mumble’s (Elijah Wood) dancing makes him different than the other emperor penguins. During his inevitable self-imposed exile he befriends a goofy group of Latin penguin caricatures lea by Robin Williams playing (surprise!) Robin Williams, and both silliness and questing follow.
Big song and dance numbers, a harrowing escape from a leopard seal, and even a visually stunning bit of underwater acrobatics all give the film the polish of a studio film plugging the formula. Which is fine, until ice wears thin and we break into the frigidity of those dreaded issues lurking below.
Human interference, a recurring theme already made abundantly clear by declining fish stocks, is rendered in the film’s last quarter as subtly as the film’s superimposed human actors. Like the ugly stain his actors smear on the digital canvas, Miller’s need to drop in a sermon on environmentalism and secular humanism (really) taints the whole project. What begins as "forgettable pre-Christmas shlock" concludes uniquely with, "wait, what the hell did that penguin just say?"
Happy Feet is a half-but-bleeding-hearted addition to the recent slew of equally forgettable animated films. Like so many of its predecessors, it assumes that a children’s movie doesn’t need to be anything but a dumbed-down product with a few jokes thrown in for the benefit of the adults. While its creators aren’t entirely wrong, even those nods and bare competence won’t be enough after the DVD has been worn into a useless coaster by obsessive children. Adults won’t stand for it, and kids deserve better. |
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