Happy Feet

I took the day off to go on a field trip with Becca to Tallahassee.  On the bus they showed “Happy Feet” and I thought to myself that I’ll watch the first five minutes and go back to my book.  The trailers didn’t look that good and I wasn’t expecting much.  After five minutes I was pretty much done with it but Becca was into it and was holding on to me so I ended watching a little more of it.  After I got through 20 minutes or so, I decided to watch the whole thing.

It wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t much but it wasn’t as painful to sit through as I expected.  The Emperor penguins find their mates through song.  In the movie, everyone was singing pop songs (badly at that) and that was their interpretation of the individual penguin’s song.  It was cute for about 30 seconds.  Then it just became downright irritating.  So, baby penguin is born and he can’t sing.  But he can tap dance.  His father tells him to stop dancing and just go to school and try to learn to be normal.  Baby penguin grows up and falls in love, but he still can’t sing.  He gains a tiny bit of acceptance and starts to get a few penguins dancing until the elders come forth and blame his un-natural behavior is causing the fish drought.
He finds himself out of the colony and discovers other tribes of penguins.  These penguins are impressed with his ability and he’s now a celebrity instead of an outcast.  In this community they have a guru penguin who claims to have knowledge of an alien race.  His proof of this is the alien necklace he wears.  Of course the aliens are mankind and his necklace is a plastic 6-pack ring.
Our hero finally discovers the aliens and realizes that they are taking the fish.  He goes after the aliens and is captured and put in a zoo.  A tracking device is attached to him and he returns home.  The humans tracking him are so impressed with the dancing penguins they film them and the footage travels the globe (YouTube?).  Everyone is so impressed with the penguins that they raise awareness of their fish shortage and they pass new legislation limiting human fishing in order to save the penguins.

It was cute.  It was also boring.  I normally hate Robin Williams’ “over the top-ness” but it was the only saving grace in this thing.  The plot was lame, the turns were telegraphed miles ahead, the environmental message was bashed over our heads and the singing rubbed me like a cheese grater.  The silly Robin Williams voices were actually a welcome intrusion.  Reading this last line, it sounds like I hate this movie but I don’t.  It was a good movie to sit and watch with Becca, she loved it.  It was not a movie I would watch on my own.