A Failure as an Animated Movie, as a Children's Movie, and as a Nature Film

Rating: 2/10 (22 November 2006)

"Happy Feet" is more weird than endearing, and it fails at the true test of an animated flick for kids: it does not create its own world. It also fails the true test of a nature flick: "Happy Feet" does not honor the world it claims to depict.
"Happy Feet" claims to be about promoting man's respect for the natural world, and yet the movie treats the natural world with tremendous contempt. In that contempt, "Happy Feet" is a failure as an animated movie, and as a children's movie.
A really good children's movie, a really good animated movie, and/or a really good movie about the natural world MUST do this one thing: it must create an alternate world that makes you forget other worlds you've ever been part of.
Disney classics like "Snow White," "Bambi," and "Pinocchio" create their own worlds, their own aesthetic. They aren't imitations of other works of art; other works of art imitate *them.* These films, in creating their own worlds, become touchstones. We talk about deer as "Bambi." For example, when states try to cull deer populations, politicians say, "Voters don't want us to shoot Bambi."
"Happy Feet" does not create its own world. It is a cheap, plastic knock-off of grade B movies, television sitcoms, and commercials we've seen a zillion times before. How many times have you heard someone do a really bad Elvis Presley imitation, as Hugh Jackman does in his voicing of his character? How many times have you heard a woman do a bad Marilyn Monroe imitation, as Nicole Kidman does? And -- Robin Williams? Doing tacky ethnic schtick? Does the world really need more of that?
"Happy Feet's" humor is drawn from ethnic stereotyping. The "bad" penguins are white Southerners -- I guess -- thus Aussie Hugh Jackman's bogus Southern accent. The "good" penguins are barrio Hispanics. These Hispanic penguins are so stereotypical you expect them to be depicted costumed as Lou Diamond Philips in "Stand and Deliver," or "La Bamba" and driving low-rider cars.
The point - if this movie really loved and cared about nature, its humor and its interest would be drawn from real penguins' real lives. This shouldn't be so hard to do -- who hasn't laughed or been touched while observing penguins in a zoo? But the movie just slips penguin costumes over stereotypical urban Hispanic Americans. So much for nature.
"March of the Penguins," 2005's brilliant documentary, transported viewers to a completely different world -- the world of penguins of Antarctica. For the moments that I was watching that film, I felt completely apart from modern America. That's because that movie was really about penguins, not ethnic stereotypes in penguin costumes.
"Happy Feet" drags penguins and Antarctica down to the level of a slum and uses rehashed ethnic humor to amuse its audience. The film has no faith that any authentic depiction of penguins or Antarctica would interest anyone.
There are horror scenes that are much too intense for young children. The main character, a defenseless ball of penguin fluff named "Mumble," is drawn practically in the mouths of predatory skua and seals. I'm an adult, and I found these scenes hard to watch.
Grant the film this: the animation is superb. The film's beautiful images, though, can't rescue its desperate plot.