Free yourself, be yourself.

Rating: 8/10 (28 November 2006)

I actually planned not to see this. Not because I think it's leftist, blasphemous propaganda (WTF?!!), but because I just think Hollywood has saturated the public with too many 3-D/PIXAR/TOY STORY/MONSTER'S INC/FINDING NEMO/SHREK/CARS/computer animated films. My particular generation (younger than the baby boomer's, but older then the GenXers) grew up on cell animation, the cartoony, 2-D stuff. Now not only do most persons under the age of 30 not know (or care) what that is, but the old style of animation is apparently obsolete in film-making nowadays.
So there you are. But the story is deliciously simple, straightforward, and in the end very moving and sentimental. We have a pride of penguins. They communicate by singing. Literally. That's your 'buy-the-bit' premise. The Emperor penguins of Antartica sing. Some sing better than others, but in matters of solidifying your identity and wooing your future mate, they MUST sing. They sing rock 'n' roll. They sing jazz and blues. They sing Elvis, they sing Queen, they sing Stevie Wonder. Unfortunately, one newly hatched member of them cannot sing. But he can tap dance, almost magically- with feet as fleet as Savion Glover (your humble ghost tapper). Unfortunately, this difference is enough to make him an outcast in his community, and there's your fable and moral in one fell swoop. But the film pulls this off wonderfully, from small comic bits of tone-deaf vocalizing by Elijah Wood (voice of our hero), to supporting bits of hilarity by Robin Williams- the voice of no less than THREE characters, including a sort of elder penguin evangelist who sounds a great deal like Barry White. The film's most joyous scenes are Wood's tapping penguin meeting and befriending a group of lusty Latin penguins (their leader also voiced by Williams), who not only accept the non-singing Wood, but actually regard him as "accidentally cool." When the film develops into its more dramatic second half (resolving the penguins' food famine as well as the future existence of the penguins themselves), some of the movie's lighter-than-air pace comes to a screeching halt. But it's worth it to hear tributes to some great music, including Elvis's 'Heartbreak Hotel,' Prince's 'Kiss,' Stevie Wonder's 'I Wish,' and the disco-influenced 'Boogie Wonderland,' which may illustrate the best scene in the film: a full-blown staccato courtship done entirely in song-and-tap dance between two penguins falling in love. A true charmer, with a lesson about embracing your differences and accepting them in others-- a premise that, unfortunately, has already been interpreted by some critics as some kind of secular, liberal agenda to pounce upon the masses. Oy gevalt! Hopefully, you will just watch the film and find it as entertaining as I did.