Beautiful and rhythmic, but lacks original story

Rating: 5/10 (19 November 2006)

Here's a film that keeps your attention simply by its sheer beauty and rhythm. And....that's about it.
George Miller's "Happy Feet" is one groovin' flick, chock full of rapturous R'n'B dance sequences brought to us from the frozen wastelands of Antartica, performed by thousands of chillin' penguins. They hop, jump, sing like they're in a music vid, and dance n' move better than any Hollywood choreographer could ever get people to do. Some of them do actually make you want to sing or tap (take your pick) along with them.
This is all wrapped in some of the best animation I've ever seen. Snow moves under the penguins' feet. Blizzards are incredibly dense particle effects. The lighting is masterful. The detail on the faces of seals and orcas are almost sickly good. The scope of some FX shots are simply awesome. They just make you go "WOW!"
But that's about all there is to the film. The story is standard animation film fair at best, and finally resorts to save-the-animals-environmental wishwash.
We follow, from birth, a cute little penguin named Mumble (Elijah Wood), who was stricken with a defect that made him unable to sing along with all the other penguins. Singing, you see, is the way that these penguins attract a mate. The film opens with a slightly dirty dance sequence with a bunch of guy 'guins chasing after a "chicka". (This was a little marring in a animated PG flick.) Mumble's only gift is an unstoppable tap-dancing talent that other penguins see as a disgrace. So Mumble is an outcast, rejected by all the other youthful, vocally well-endowed penguins. He is chased by a seal and runs into a group of seriously- kewl hombre penguins, lead by the swaggering, Carlos Mencia-like Ramone (Robin Williams). They think Mumble's tapping abilities are the bomb, so they agree to help him gain back respect from the other penguins. That happens pretty smoothly, with the help of a huge musical number.
Then the story jumps into environmentalist humans-are-evil mode. Apparently, there is a dire fish shortage, and somehow Mumble is accused of causing it (the movie never really makes this point clear). So Mumble goes on a huge journey to tell the humans to stop fishing in Antartica. This adventure takes up a surprisingly small amount of screen time, possibly because the first story wasn't enough to make an entire movie. The screenwriter needed to add a little something more. Unfortunately, the film ends with the completion of the age- old formula. Animals win the hearts of the people, they're saved, we're all happy, cue big musical number, roll them credits.
This is REALLY unfortunate, because the movie had such rhythm, style and beauty that if they had taken the time to inject some Pixar-caliber characters and an original story, the movie would have been simply marvelous.