Happy Feet

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"Looking back on when I
Was a little nappy headed boy.
Trying your best to bring the
Water to your eyes.
Thinking it might stop her
From whoopin your behind.

I wish those days could
Come back once more.
Why did those days
Ever have to go.
Cause I loved them so."

When the teaser trailer debuted for "Happy Feet" with the heavily edited version of Stevie Wonder´s awesome song "I Wish" and featuring baby Mumbles tap dancing was enough to put "Happy Feet" near the top of my list of films to see. I fell in love with that little minute and a half clip of the tap dancing penguin and embedded the video on my blog and spread the word that everybody had to check it out. Some people thought it was the cutest thing they had ever seen. Others agreed it looked interesting. Others were simply amazed I was familiar with the classic Stevie Wonder tune. Regardless, I marked the day on my calendar for "Happy Feet´s" release and eagerly awaited the movie that featured the little tap dancing penguin.

Then came the other trailers.

Robin Williams. Elijah Wood. Brittany Murphy. Hugh Jackman. Nicole Kidman. Hugo Weaving. Robin Williams in another role. The second, third and fourth for trailers drowned my enthusiasm for the picture. Once I learned that little Mumbles spent much of his time as a gawky teenage penguin, "Happy Feet" was no longer a film I was overly eager to see. As far as I was concerned, the film was going to be another star-studded computer animated film that was besieged with pop-culture references and a shoddy story. I started to reject my beloved teaser trailer as a computer generated advertisement and figured the footage of baby Mumbles getting funky to Stevie Wonder would not exist in the final film. Months before "Happy Feet" hit theaters, I was already crushed by the film.

My ten year old nephew talked my seventy three year old mother into going to the movie theaters for the first time since she saw "Midnight Cowboy" in Germany in 1969. They loved the film and thought it was amazing. I had already seen the pop songs sung by the penguins and knew that Robin Williams would do a Salsa version of Frank Sinatra´s "My Way." I wanted nothing to do with the movie that didn´t include much baby Mumbles and featured Spanish penguins. The film looked amazing in the trailers from a technological standpoint, but I had already judged the George Miller film without seeing anything more than the onslaught of trailers and had wished the director had stuck with his "Mad Max" series. Why did they have to taunt me with the Stevie Wonder trailer?

Then came the Blu-ray screener.

The screener arrived from Warner Bros. and I knew that I would now have to watch "Happy Feet." Of course, the very first thing I did was pop the disc in and go to the special features and look for my teaser. It wasn´t there. "Happy Feet" was just becoming a worsening deal. I had planned on watching the film over the weekend and getting my review posted over the weekend. However, no amount of effort could be made to watch the film on my days off. It wasn´t going to be a ninety minute picture about a cute and lovable baby Emperor penguin that would tap dance to classic music. It was going to feature Mexican speaking Penguins that pronounced ´man´ with a ´g´ tacked onto the end of the word and ´you´ is pronounced ´joo.´

Sunday night, I finally sat down and watched "Happy Feet" with my nephew. He loved the film and was eager to see it in high definition on my home theater rig. Baby Mumbles occupies only ten minutes of screen time. He is then replaced by a tall, molt-deficient adolescent penguin voiced by Elijah Wood. The film is not the film had eagerly anticipated and I will always look to "Happy Feet" at having an incredibly well done teaser and then poor trailers, because in the end, I give the film a passing great. It is actually entertaining and it certainly helps to watch the film with an eleven year old (he has had a birthday since seeing it theatrically). There is at least a watchful angel working for Warner Bros. The "I Wish" tap dancing scene is indeed included in the film. It isn´t exactly as appears on the teaser trailer, but it is close enough!

"Happy Feet" is the story of a young penguin born to overly talented singing penguins Memphis (Nicole Kidman) and Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman). While Norma Jean is off fishing, Memphis accidentally drops the egg and when it comes time for the young penguins to hatch, Mumbles arrives late and has a weird twitch with his feet that is very much unpenguinlike. As he matures, it is discovered that Mumbles has no singing voice and when he does try to sing, the experience is painful to all that surround him. He falls in love with Gloria (Brittany Murphy), who is just as talented as Memphis and Norma Jean. However, he is ostracized from his flock and leaves. After being chased by a seal in a beautiful CGI scene, he discovers smaller penguins of possible Hispanic origin and led by Ramon (Robin Williams). These penguins do not sing. They dance. And Mumbles is quickly respected for his happy feet by the penguins. Mumbles decides to set out and find what is killing the food supply of fish and asks the short penguin´s oracle, Lovelace (Robin Williams) what he knows about the aliens. They set off on an adventure to find the aliens who have killed off the fish supply.

The Hispanic penguins are grating. They really could have done without making them so Mexican. I´m not sure an animated penguin should use words like "Amigo" and I wonder how Mexican´s view the stereotypical language used by the little penguins who must live in the Southern part of Antarctica. Fortunately, they are funny enough to almost make up for the Spanish twang to their speech. Ultimately, when Mumbles does stumble across man, he is captured and placed in a zoo. There, man discovers his tapdancing and he is sent back to Antarctica to his people and wins the affections of Gloria and shows that his happy feet are just as wonderful as the others´ singing voices. This inclusion of environmental topics feels very forced and "Happy Feet" moves too far into the territory of being a social statement than a children´s animated film. Of course, I just wanted a long movie about baby Mumbles.

The film is certainly fun and although adolescent Mumbles is not cute and can´t hold a candle to the draw power of baby Mumbles, this is a big adventure for baby penguins. The real strength is the CGI of this film. Antarctica looks stunning. The waves upon waves of penguins are amazing and rivals the huge battles in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The killer whales and the seal are some of the best CGI imagery I have yet to see and the CGI humans during the film´s pivotal environmental message are so realistic, they are creepy. The voice actors do their parts well enough, though two Salsa incarnations of Robin Williams was a bit much. The singing by the actors was easy enough to stomach, but I´m not sure I´ll ever accept either Nicole Kidman or Hugh Jackman singing Prince´s "Kiss" as being valid entertainment. The only true pop culture moment (aside from the music) was probably missed by most audience members. There is a definite reference to "2001: A Space Odyssey" in the penguin exhibit. I will always feel that a film centered around a baby Mumbles would have been far superior and that the little Penguins would have been better served not being tied to a racial stereotype. "Happy Feet" was not the disaster I had expected and it had its redeeming moments. For one amazing minute and a half period, the film is what I had wanted it to be and I thank the filmmakers for putting the Stevie Wonder clip in the film.

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