Not so Happy Feet

Rating: 5/10 (27 May 2009)

What's not happy about dancing, cuddly little penguins! You may ask, well, a whole lot apparently.
Contrary to what the title suggests, Happy Feet is really anything but. What really should have been a heartwarming and funny film ended up being about as funny as a funeral and as heartwarming as "An Inconvenient Truth".
At the end of the film, myself and the other viewers I was with all came to the same conclusion, this film was really quite depressing. The depression this film inspired really had nothing to do with the overtly "Al Gore-esque" message, it just simply was an upsettingly dreary film. Toward the ending, I started asking myself "what kind of movie is this? While somewhat disturbing images flooded from the screen, as the film's protagonist is caged in a zoo and seeing strange images floating in front of him.
One of the films features that really caused the traumatic end result, was simply the complete unrelatability of any of the characters. Mumble, the would-be lovable protagonist, simply has nothing relatable about him, the character has no passion, no soul, simply a pathetic sounding Elijah Wood voice that adds nothing to the character. Due to this characterization Mumble feels alienating, because you can't relate to him, you can't get inside his head, thus none of his decisions throughout the movie make any sense (eg. randomly dissing his girlfriend).
Among the rest of the unrelatable ensemble is Lovelace, A sex obsessed, narcissistic, gospel preacher who, although somewhat entertaining, is extremely unlikable. There are the hyperactive "amigos" who, while adding some visual entertainment, really serve as goofy stooges who don't fit with the rest of the movie's bleakness. There are the protagonists parents. The mother is simply a background character that doesn't seem to have an effect on anything in the films plot. The father is an obnoxious Elvis caricature who is so shallow it's not possible to take him seriously. The protagonists girlfriend is the typical, uninteresting girlfriend we get used to in any sort of movie. And then there's the Catholic-esquire Elders, the film's primary antagonists. Your typical religious stereotypes, judgmental, power-hungry, and elderly.
The entire bleakness of the movie is capped off with an unrelentlessly happy ending that the word "disjointed" can't even begin to describe. Aside from being ridiculously happy, the ending was also just flat out stupid. It was so random in fact that it felt as if the director had been on the verge of suicide while directing the rest of it, then suddenly started tripping on acid right before the ending.
The ridiculous ending just added to the film's depression, it left me with this empty feeling that took a while to get over. I had been subjected to a movie that felt self-destructive at points, and then had something that felt drug-induced just launched at my face, and then the credits started rolling. I really had almost no clue what to make of it until further reflection (which took place much later), this movie serves no purpose, it had it's human-induced destruction message, but even so, it felt distinctly empty, there was no real heart behind it. All there was was dancing penguins and world destruction, that's about it.
5/10 stars, visually well crafted, otherwise, pointless.