Fantastic animation, but the story is a mess

Rating: 6/10 (28 December 2006)

Talk about misleading advertising. If you've seen the trailer you'd think, like I did, that you were going to watch a cute light-hearted animated musical about dancing penguins, with the familiar-but-winning story of an outsider finding acceptance at its core.
Well, there's music - although not anywhere as much as the trailers would let you believe. There are definitely penguins, cute and superbly animated, with amazing intricacy of detail and every single feather fluttering delicately in the breeze. However, a few minutes into the movie something about the penguins' appearance started to bug me and soon I realised what it was: it was their eyes. There's a good reason why you so often see absurdly exaggerated eyes in animation. I thought that, in attempting to keep the penguins as close to the realistic creatures as possible, the animators robbed their "faces" of much expressiveness and emotion - their eyes often look nothing more than dead dull pellets.
The characters themselves are a mixed bag. The main hero, Mumble (voiced unmemorably by Elijah Wood), is fluffy and adorable but kinda short on personality. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman are equally unmemorable as Mumble's parents. Brittany Murphy fares much better as the sassy and bright Gloria, Mumble's love interest and a singer extraordinaire; her character also has one of the best musical interludes in the film. The Latino-sounding group of little penguins who befriend Mumble are a hilarious bunch, with Robin Williams' Ramon a highlight. Williams also provides a voice for Lovelace, an eccentric prophet-like figure who is not anywhere as entertaining as he should be. My favourite moments probably involved the random "baddies" - a group of bad-tempered vultures and a scary leopard seal who is not anywhere as nimble on the ice as he is in the water.
The story... well the story is a problem. I got the feeling that the film never manages to make up its mind on what exactly it is about. It starts off as a quiet, personal story of a misfit struggling against the prejudice and conformity but then it abruptly switches gears and whacks you over the head with a heavy-handed environmental "message" and an ending that's way too cutesy and unrealistic even for an animated children's movie. Plus there're plot holes galore - how exactly did Mumble get back home?? Overall, I thought that the movie was beautifully done, often amusing and diverting, but ultimately not the one to remember.