Great animation and messages, but not a great movie.

Rating: 4/10 (26 December 2006)

I went into this film having seen the preview and loving the animation I had seen. On that point I was not disappointed. The film looked beautiful. I even agree with the environmental message of the film and thought that it was handled fairly well.
Sadly, the film bothered me, not on visuals or message, but on the dissonance in the story line. It starts as a film about an outcast penguin and, about midway through the film, make a hard turn into an environmental film.
As best I can tell, this film shows what happens when too many writers put words on the shooting script. Looking back, you can almost see that there was a smaller, more personal movie that was handed to a new writer, and was morphed into the environmental film. Sadly, the new writer(s) didn't really unify the first part of the film with the second part.
I had much higher hopes for this film. And while my 5 year old daughter loved it (which may mean that it has done exactly what it intended to do, since it is a kid's film), as an adult I wouldn't watch it with for my own entertainment.