A Secret Alien Plot?

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2007)

I could almost give this movie a ten - the animation detail on those exquisite penguins is mind-blowing - except for the bizarre ending. They seemed to be saying that if the talented, oppressed minorities would just submit to being tagged with electric boxes and singing for their supper to the Alien Aryan oppressors, they would be allowed to survive. Shades of early Hollywood's treatment of some of the fine Asian, African American, and Latino performers who were never given proper credit for their consummate skill and humanity - only for their entertainment value to mainstream America.
This is one of the most surreal child movie endings I think I have ever seen on film, and I'm really not sure if I can even come up with a logic for why they chose it. To make such a point of demonstrating how awful the imprisonment at the zoo is, and then expecting me to cheer when our young dancing penguin protagonist appears, fully wired, to make his fellow species accept the inevitable, is so sci-fi to me that I began to think I had wandered into an elaborate modern Twilight Zone episode. I suppose the idea was that technology has given humans the ability to observe animals to such a degree that we can actually have empathy for them, yet all I see from the plot leading up to this conclusion is that technology - ie. the plastic beer can holder strangling the charismatic spiritual leader - is that technology is the brutal oppressor of all things good and great and natural.
I hate message films that contradict themselves at every turn, but I love great computer animation, so I am giving this a much higher rating than I feel the strangely convoluted, fake unity message merits. I also think the little ones will be so happy from the song-and-dance cuteness of it all that what I think makes not a whit of difference. Also kudos to giving a truly great tap artist, Sabian Glover, some very deserved screen time. Next time I hope to see the actual Sabian and his buddies on screen - so we can see what the real artistic fuss is all about. Fun to about three quarters of the way in, and a bit long for a kid flick, but definitely great, heartfelt animation art.