Utter drivel

Rating: 2/10 (28 June 2007)

Oh no, not another wasted two hours of my life. I wanted to turn it off 15 minutes into it, but since I was entertaining a guest who seemed to be enjoying it, I just sat through it.
The singing and dancing was plain annoying. The supposedly talented tap-dancing of the lead penguin looked to me exactly like it looked to all his fellow penguins - stupid. And why on earth the female lead penguin felt so attracted to the obvious loser slow-developing twitchy-leg squeaky-voice male lead penguin, when there were plenty of buff penguins around, I have no idea. Too bad all the penguins looked alike as well. Or what was the point of those five short hispanic penguins? Why five? Two would have sufficed. Or was the point to reaffirm, that hispanics only travel in gangs? Anyway - hispanic penguins? Or Scottish penguins? Australian penguins? Please. Or how come all the different species (seals, penguins, birds) were able to talk fluently to each other, yet they couldn't communicate with humans? As for the voice acting, I've never understood the point of hiring well-known actors to voice animated characters. There was a Nicole Kidman? Where? Elijah Wood? Really? On the other hand, it was beyond annoying to hear Robin Williams' voice come out of more than one character's mouth. His voice is just too distinctly recognizable for that to work. The point is - "superstar" voices either get lost or become distracting, whereas hiring talented voicers without big names lets you just concentrate on the movie without having to guess who's who or becoming annoyed by the too recognizable voices.
Oh yeah, and wait till you see the most twisted depiction of a seal. Killer sharks don't even hold a candle to the seals that seem to be living on the south pole.
And the conclusion? Humanity decides to stop fishing where penguins live, so that they'd have more food available - because people discover that penguins can tap-dance and they think its cute and funny. Oh and the penguins are sooo happy to please people with their tap-dancing too. Disgusting. Because what about all the other endangered species in the world? Do they have any hope of survival only if they learn some circus acrobatics or clown tricks to amuse humans? And if they don't, they'll be driven extinct because they are not "cute and amusing" enough? My god. Who on earth came up with this plot.
My rating - two stars. One for the effort - I mean people did work on this movie after all, so that has to account for something. The other for when the lead penguin was small. He was kind'a cute, even with those annoying twitchy legs.