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PLOT: An oddball Emperor Penguin is born without the ability to sing (and hence unable to deliver his distinctive mating "heartsong"). But he is able to tapdance, and he uses it to learn about life and not incidentally save Antarctica from the predations of two-legged "aliens."
If I'd seen one more perky animals-on-the-loose CG film this year, I might have become a card-carrying Luddite.
Happily, Happy Feet is not that.
Set against unbelievable Antarctic beauty (captured in two separate film expeditions) it's a suggestion of what Hollywood should be doing with CGI, instead of pumping mediocre cartoons out like Hanna-Barbera with pixels.
It's also a rare instance where a movie is so ill-served by its trailer, the commercials are probably turning off some customers. Yes, Happy Feet -- in which the director of Babe switches from pigs to penguins and goes digital -- is one jam-packed musical, awash in choreography (by Savion Glover) and generation-spanning pop (from Elvis, to Grandmaster Flash, to Pink). But that is not the entirety of its charms, and Happy Feet is not a movie that needs to be marketed by pandering to Boomer and Gen-X nostalgia.
Nor does it really need Robin Williams at all. But there he is, chewing up scenery (insofar as penguins can chew) in not one but two roles -- as a tiny hyper-macho Argentinian gangleader penguin (joo can pro'ly feegure what kane accent he got) and as a Barry White-ish, womanizing penguin guru for said Latino birds.
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But Happy Feet keeps its eye on its frozen prize. March Of The Penguins redux, it's the story of mom and dad Emperor Penguins named Norma Jean and Memphis (Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman reprising Marilyn and Elvis), whose egg Memphis must hatch while mom ... well, you know that story by now, you don't need Morgan Freeman narrating it.
Problem is, Memphis drops the egg, and baby Mumble (Elijah Wood) -- the son of the two best singers in a flock of thousands -- is born without the ability to sing his "heartsong."
But he can tapdance as well as, um, Savion Glover -- which seems Satanic to the elders (the leader is voiced by The Matrix's still-chilling Hugo Weaving). So the stage is set for Memphis to leave his girlfriend (Brittany Murphy) and set forth on a journey to save the world, with the help of a ragtag fellowship of penguins. And, hey, he's short and has big feet. Think of him as "Mr. Frozo."
There are some ambitious themes bandied about in Happy Feet (at a recent press conference, a Fundamentalist Christian publication writer criticized the film for treating global warming as real and for treating the traditionalist "elders" as intractible fools).
Suffice to say, if you have younger children, you should take the PG rating seriously. There are some remarkably intense scenes regarding an ice avalanche and an attack by a Jaws-like leopard seal (only in a movie about penguins could seals lose their "cute").
There's also a "change of venue" involving Mumbles' capture by weird, two-legged "aliens," an Orwellian captivity some kids clearly find disturbing.
In the end, Happy Feet is powered by a simple truth -- penguins are hilarious, maybe even funnier than monkeys.
BOTTOM LINE: A much more soulful kid flick than the trailers suggest (though it is one jam-packed dance musical). What really makes it distinctive is its breathtaking Antarctic template (taken from two separate film expeditions): An eerie world of ice mountains, valleys and canyons that uses CG's potential to the fullest.
(This film is rated PG)