Beautifully Animated But Somewhat Superficial Penguin Musical Adventure

Rating: 5/10 (6 June 2007)

Mumble is a young Emperor penguin who loves to dance, but is shunned by his tribe because he cannot sing. Befriended by a gang of little Adelie penguins, and curious about the outside world, Mumble is determined to find out why the fish are disappearing and if he can use his talents to restore the natural balance.
World's best animated dancing penguin movie. Whilst I might not like it as much as Shrek or Cars, this Australian flick is still pretty irresistible family fun, and the quality of the computer animation is outstanding throughout. Some sequences - such as when Mumble and the gang slip-slide down the mountain - push CG techniques to the absolute limit with breathtaking visual imagination. Although the film has a fairly limited pictorial scope (it's all penguins and ice-floes) it's never less than eye-popping. However, the plot, which borrows heavily from two Hans Christian Andersen stories (The Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid) is a bit thin for a whole movie I'm afraid - how many musical penguin numbers can you stage before getting repetitious ? There are a few fine action scenes, a great score by John Powell, some cool use of songs (The Beach Boys' Do It Again and Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five's The Message) and gifted director Miller pulls off some stunning moments, such as the sudden three-shot pull-back of Mumble in the zoo to the Earth from space, but overall it's a bit too cutesy. The voice cast are good, with Jackman doing a great Elvis take and Weaving as a dour Scottish zealot, but Williams steals the show (as in Aladdin), as both narrator and two separate characters, such as when he berates the Emperors for ostracising Mumble with, "We sing the heart of our true friend, Mumble. Joo are a nation of peeny-weeny, pibbling, pickolini, piddly-diddly !". Dedicated to Australian naturalist Steve Irwin, who plays one of the elephant seals, and who was tragically killed by a stingray just prior to release. I'd really like to see this on a double-bill with my favourite of Miller's movies, Mad Max 2.