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I think your feet will be happiest as you exit the movie, realizing no one can make you watch it again.  Happy Feet is sold to us as a cute movie with cuddly dancing and singing penguins, but becomes a life or death battle with a storyline that could have been written by Al Gore.    

Elijah Wood stars as Mumble – a penguin facing eternal loneliness.  Unlike his parents, Memphis (Hugh Jackman) and Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman), who have beautiful singing voices that all penguins use to attract their lifelong mate, Mumble, maybe because Memphis dropped his egg during incubation, cannot sing, but he is a wonderful, happy dancer.  Eventually, his lack of singing skills drives him away from the rest of the emperor penguins, even though Gloria (Brittany Murphy) has a thing for the guy.  The elder penguins think his dancing is causing disharmony among the group, and the cause of the recent lack of fish the penguins depend on to eat, so Mumble finds himself on an odyssey to find his place in this world, and trying to appeal to the humans who have been taking all of the fish.

Can the penguins finally come to terms with Mumble’s unique talent?  Will he save them all?

In the end, I think Happy Feet will be best known for some strange vocal choices.  Why did they make Robin Williams and the smaller penguins into Latinos (and kind of stereotypical ones at that)?  How come Jackman sounds like a cross between Elvis Presley and Foghorn Leghorn?  How come Nicole Kidman doesn’t sound like Nicole Kidman?  All of those odd choices make you reflect on other weird plot choices.

Like many, I went into Happy Feet expecting a cute kiddie movie about a little penguin outcaste who wins over the girl penguin of his dreams with dancing instead of singing, but, after starting out like that, the film takes a turn into darker, dangerous territory with a heavy handed pro-environmental message thrown in to crush any laughter you may have experienced.  Mumble and his buddies, Lovelace (Williams), Ramon (Williams) and the rest of the amigo penguins often are in danger of becoming dinner for other animals in the movie.  In between the cute song and dance numbers, these sequences are intense as ferocious animals with frightening fangs beckon your child to have nightmares about this stuff for years.  Even one child in the audience when I saw the movie was screaming and crying in terror as the heroes tried to escape certain death, so her parent wisely removed the poor kid (I was thinking about doing the same for myself, but I just wiped away the tears, went to my happy place, and soldiered on). 

Then, we have to learn all about how evil the human beings are for taking fish away from the penguins.  Writers Warren Coleman, John Collee and Judy Mathis want to beat the audience over the head with a story about how commercial fishing by humans is starving the lovable penguins, which feels plopped onto the movie to make it longer, but is this the place to bring that message home, when all anyone who buys a ticket to Happy Feet wants is a fun time for themselves and the kids?      

Yes, you get some fun songs, and Williams hits more than misses with his funny one-liners and outrageous behavior, but Happy Feet is a disappointment set to pop music with some awesome animation thrown in (but even that gets dizzying and hard to follow at times like the scene of a sea lion chasing Mumble).  The story isn’t consistent enough, and the environmental stuff might put your kid to sleep before all is said and done (only to awaken during the nightmare of a sea lion chasing them).  You might even start to snooze a bit.  

1 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4)

Happy Feet is rated PG for some peril and rude humor 

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