Let's Watch This: "Happy Feet" (2006)

Happy Feet! The incredibly popular animated film that isn't actually popular at all. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film, made mucho moolah at the box office, and was beloved by critics. It seemed as though Happy Feet would become the next Ice Age. But it didn't. It got one sequel, which was a flop, some video games, and a 4D experience at places like SeaWorld and the Nickelodeon Hotel. And then it fell into the Pit of Animation Obscurity alongside the OTHER Warner Bros.-distributed animated film from 2006, The Ant Bully. How did that happen?

Well, I think it mainly stems from the fact that it's a movie from the 2000s. I'm constantly scratching my head wondering how it's been sixteen years since 2006 already. There are a LOT of animated films from the 2000s that you don't hear people talk about much, except when they're doing lists of underrated animated movies. Who knows? Maybe years from now, people will look back on more recent animated films like Abominable and that Rumble movie the same way that we look back at 2000s animated films like Over the Hedge and Igor. Y'know, in a "Oh, yeah, that was a thing" sort of way?

But, let's talk about Happy Feet itself. It was made during the time period where penguins were the new monkeys - y'know, the animal that people thought were automatically a crowd-pleaser. It started with either March of the Penguins or the Madagascar penguins. Much like monkeys, penguins are not in of themselves funny - they CAN be funny, but their being penguins does not automatically make them humorous. A penguin just standing there doing what a penguin usually does is not funny. A penguin attempting to fly and falling on its rear end is funny. A penguin shooting itself out of a cannon in an attempt to fly and crashing into a billboard or a brick wall or something would be hysterical*. But anyway, people loved penguins. Nobody gave a rat's tail about polar bears or seals or musk oxen.

The film was in production at least as far back as 2001. At one point they were planning on having the penguins encounter aliens. I guess one of the script-writers encountered that one pigeon from Bolt and took his advice:

Happy Feet was directed by George Miller of Mad Max fame, who also wrote the film along with Warren Coleman, John Collee, and Judy Morris. The film was produced at the Sydney-based animation studio Animal Logic, well-known for their unbelievably realistic-looking CGI animation (they've also done The LEGO Movie, Legend of the Guardians, and a 2012 Coca-Cola Polar Bears commercial) - this, I believe, was the film that put them on the map. And it features the voices of Elijah Wood, Hugh Jackman, Robin Williams, Brittany Murphy, Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving, Elizabeth Daily (a professional voice actress in a big-budget animated film?! It's like spotting a unicorn!), and even Steve Irwin. As I've said before, it was a box-office success and a hit with critics, making its lesser-known status nowadays all the more puzzling. But enough yammering about the film, let's actually WATCH the film. This is Happy Feet.

So, the movie begins... IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! We hear voices singing as we eventually zoom in on the planet Earth and find a waddle of penguins (that's one of the things you call a group of penguins. Thank you, Google) dancing awkwardly and singing. Apparently, singing is how penguins find mates. Being penguins, they don't have computers, so they can't just go to Match.com or whatever.

Anyhow, a penguin who sounds like Elvis runs into a penguin who sounds like Marilyn Monroe. They are voiced by Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, and according to the narration by Robin Williams they are the parents of our main character.

You can tell they're in love because they're forming a heart shape. Subtlety is for morons.

Soon Memphis (the Hugh Jackman-voiced one) and Norma Jean (the Nicole Kidman-voiced one) have themselves an egg, and as is the case for emperor penguins, Norma Jean and the other females leave to do some fishing while Memphis and the other males watch the eggs. We cut to the male penguins going all March of the Penguins on us...

I haven't actually seen March of the Penguins, but I'm guessing it's something like this. Except,
y'know, the penguins don't sing every five seconds.

A penguin with a Scottish accent shouts at the others to "GIVE PRAISE TO THE GREAT 'GUIN WHO PUTS SONGS IN OUR HEARTS AND FISH IN OUR BELLIES!" as, uh, this happens...

No, seriously, what is this? A hallucination? The Aurora Borealis taking the form of a penguin? Are we going to get an answer to that? I will not just accept "the Great 'Guin". That's needlessly vague.

Memphis decides that this would be a great time to start singing and dancing... y'know, while they're in the middle of a SNOWSTORM. Predictably, this is not such a good idea, as his egg winds up slipping off his feet. Fortunately, he manages to save it.

Eventually, spring arrives and the place is crawling with fluffy baby penguins.

Oh, so THIS is why people like penguins so much...

After some WHACKY SHENANIGANS, Memphis' egg hatches, and the world is introduced to little Mumble (voiced by Elizabeth Daily). Despite being a newborn, he can already talk... AND he can dance. Memphis and the other penguins are confused by this, despite Mumble's telling them that his feet are just happy (get it? 'Cause the movie is called Happy Feet?).

Honestly, it's pretty impressive that a newborn penguin already knows how to walk, let alone DANCE, but Memphis advises Mumble not to do that around the others because "it just ain't penguin". Then we get a groin joke. Classy.

Did you know that emperor penguins are the largest species of penguin? Maybe you did, but I couldn't
think of a funny joke to make here, and I figure that if I can't be funny I should at least try to be
educational...

The female penguins return, and then we cut to all the little baby penguins at penguin school. The teacher, Miss Viola (Magda Szubanski), tells them that they will be learning how to do "heartsongs", which is what the penguins call their singing to attract mates. But it's not exactly something she can TEACH them, they have to find it all by themselves. According to a baby penguin named Gloria (Alyssa Shafer), it's "the voice you hear inside" and "who you truly are" and blah-blah-blah.

First, a baby penguin named Seymour (Cesar Flores) demonstrates HIS "heartsong", which is a rap that Miss Viola says she can "get jiggy with". People were still saying "get jiggy with it" in 2006, right? Next Gloria demonstrates her "heartsong", then Mumble demonstrates his... except that Mumble can't sing. When Noah (Hugo Weaving), the Scottish-accented leader of the penguins, hears this, he's all "I DO NOT APPROVE OF THIS".

Now, what do characters in animated movies do when one of them is different? If you've seen Dumbo, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or Khumba, then there's a very good chance that you know the answer - treat them like garbage! All the little penguins, except Gloria since she's the love interest, laugh at Mumble, and Miss Viola tells Memphis and Norma Jean that Mumble must be a freak of nature for not being able to sing. But, there is a solution - Mrs. Astrakhan (Miriam Margoyles), a Russian-accented penguin who insists that "every little penguin has a song".

"I could just eat you up! Well, except that penguins don't eat their young, so..."

Alas, Mrs. Astrakhan isn't much help. Mumble still can't sing. But he can dance. Side note, I'm just now noticing that the female penguins all have much curvier figures than the males. Presumably, this is so we can tell that they're girls. I guess when you make your character designs super-realistic, this is the most you can do to help the audience tell them apart.

Mrs. Astrakhan starts hamming it up about how she's a failure, and despite the fact that Norma Jean doesn't have a problem with Mumble being a dancer rather than a singer, Memphis insists that dancing just isn't normal. To which I say, what's wrong with not being normal? It's not exactly normal to have a penguin sound like Elvis either.

Narrator Robin Williams tells us that while Memphis and Norma Jean are "working overtime on the great commute to the sea", Mumble finds a little place he can dance up a storm without other penguins being all "WE ARE JUDGING YOU".

That penguin is a much better dancer than I am.

Eventually, Mumble runs into a flock of skuas. They're basically this movie's equivalent to the Hyenas from The Lion King.

They also have Brooklyn accents, because it's always funny when bad guys in animated movies sound
like 1950s gangsters.

The skuas (Anthony LaPaglia, Danny Mann, Mark Klastorin, and Michael Cornacchia) explain that since there aren't a lot of fish around to eat, they're going to eat Mumble. But then Mumble notices that the leader of the skuas has been tagged, leading him to start talking about how once he was abducted by aliens. "I'm sittin' on a rock, mindin' my own business, when suddenly, they're on to me! These beings, like big ugly penguins... fat, flabby faces with front-ways eyes, no feathers, no beaks, and these... these APPENDAGES!" he rants. "Dey probe me, dey tie me up, dey strap me down, dey take dis pointy thing and dey stick it into me!"

Okay, spoiler alert: these "aliens"? They're actually just human beings. Like I said, at one point the film was going to have actual aliens, who were planning to siphon off the planet's natural resources. But I guess they decided that would've been incredibly stupid. And, to be honest, I kind of agree. Just let the "protect the environment" moral be about us humans hurting cute animals like penguins, that's enough to get the point across.

After Mumble gets away from the skuas, Narrator Robin Williams tells us that Mumble "saw out his school days at the back of the class", wondering if there's a place out there beyond his home where penguins can truly belong.

"Oh, there's an empty place in my bones...
That calls out for something unknown...
There's soooooooomething out there far from my hooooooome...
A looooooooonging that I've never knooooooooown..."

Well, a few years later all the little penguin chicks are teenagers, "graduating" by being able to go to the sea for the first time. But Noah won't let Mumble, now voiced by Elijah Wood, graduate because he - GASP! - can't sing.

By the way, I didn't notice it before, but... teenage Mumble's a bit creepy-looking, isn't he? I think it's mainly the face. It looks like they were trying to make him resemble Elijah Wood, but as Shark Tale showed us, trying to make a cartoon animal look like the celebrity who's providing their voice has a habit of not working out...

Interesting fact about Mumble... apparently, they were going to have him molt, but decided to let him
keep his down feathers so he'd look different from the other penguins.

We get another song as the teenage penguins all head out to the big ice cliff overlooking the sea. Due to some WACKY SHENANIGANS, Mumble winds up being the first to fall in. They all jump in and we get a minute or so of them all swimming around doing fancy swimming tricks, and eventually Mumble runs into Gloria, now voiced by Brittany Murphy.

"Okay, fellas, keep an eye out for Nemo. I hear they're still trying to find him."

Then the penguins spot some fish and have themselves a feeding frenzy, only for Mumble to have the fish he nabs swiped right from out of his mouth by one of those pesky skuas. But, he manages to get it back.

That night, the teenage penguins have themselves a little rave and sing "Somebody to Love" by Queen. It's kind of like the howling scenes in Alpha and Omega, except it's not nearly as awkward. Mumble tries to sing along, but since he's a lousy singer, the other penguins tell him to go away.

The next day, Mumble runs afoul of a leopard seal, which I've noticed in animated movies are usually typecast as the main thing that penguins have to fear. Which makes sense, seeing as they, y'know, eat penguins, but I'm so used to seeing seals in animation portrayed as silly, loveable characters that it's always so jarring to see one act like a ruthless predator.

Leopard seals: they are to penguins what lions are to wildebeest.

The leopard seal (Roger Rose) chases Mumble through some icy underwater caverns, and at one point even manages to chomp off some of Mumble's tail. Ouch! Thankfully, he manages to escape and runs right into the film's comic relief characters. Which is fortunate, since I've really been needing some comic relief to lighten up the film.

I think I know who my favorite characters in the film are going to be...

Say hello to the Five Amigos - Ramon (Robin Williams), Nestor (Carlos Alazraqui), Raul (Lombardo Boyar), Rinaldo (Jeffrey "Sheen" Garcia), and Lombardo (Johnny Sanchez). They take Mumble to the mating grounds of their fellow Adelie penguins, where everyone is building nests out of rocks, stones, and pebbles. "The one with the most pebbles wins!" Nestor explains. The comparisons to The Pebble and the Penguin are writing themselves. But the Five Amigos don't NEED to collect pebbles to get dates. "We got personality, with a capital 'Y'!" Ramon brags. "Why? Because we're HOT!"

After Mumble and the Five Amigos recreate that scene from the first Ice Age where they're all sliding around in the ice caverns, they cause an avalanche that knocks some sort of vehicle with a claw on it into the water. Mumble is now filled with curiosity as to what that thing was, so Ramone suggests that they go see the guru, Lovelace. Narrator Robin Williams informs the audience that he is Lovelace, which anyone who saw Robin Williams being listed as the voice of Lovelace at the beginning of the film could have easily guessed already.

I love rockhopper penguins. Just look at those bushy yellow eyebrows.

Mumble asks Lovelace if he's ever been abducted by aliens, to which Lovelace explains that the six-pack holder he's wearing was bestowed upon him by "the mystic beings" during his "Epic Journey of Enlightenment to the Forbidden Shore". "I HEAR THEM! They SPEAK through me!" he shouts.

After Lovelace hams it up some more and then goes to get it on with some girl penguins, Mumble reveals his "not being able to sing" problem to the Five Amigos. Fortunately, Ramon has a plan to fix that...

Back at the Emperor Lands (that's what the penguins call their home turf), the teenage penguins are doing their "sing to find a mate" thing, then Mumble shows up, singing in Spanish. Or is he?

"Wow, Mumble, you sound a lot like Robin Williams when you sing!"

Actually, Mumble's only lip-syncing - Ramon is hiding behind Mumble and doing the actual singing. Gloria sees through it, though. By the way, this is the best cover of "My Way" EVER.

Gloria calls Mumble out for being all Mr. Deceiving and ditches him to go hang out with a quartet of penguins who sound like a boy band. Then Mumble starts dancing  and Gloria starts singing "Boogie Wonderland" and dancing as well... wait, I thought penguins didn't dance. Mumble dancing was treated as an out of the ordinary thing, but now a good chunk of the penguins are dancing.

This move is called the "I Think I Just Sprained Something In My Neck".

I would love to see, like, a filmmaker doing a penguin documentary to come across this and wonder what the heck is going on. That would be such a great joke.

But the elder penguins do not approve of the younger penguins' little dance party!

I don't know why, but these penguins remind me of Statler and Waldorf.

Noah commands the teen penguins to stop, ranting in that Scottish accent of his about how they're bringing "disorder" and "aberration" to their community... and, I'm sorry, but whenever he talks, my mind immediately goes to the guys from Braveheart. I keep expecting to shout "I WANT MY FREEDOM!" or something like that.

"They may take our fish, but they'll never take our black-and-white feathers!"

"Do you not understand that we can only survive here when we're in harmony?!" Braveheart Penguin tells Mumble. "When you and your foreign friends lead us into your easy ways, you offend the Great 'Guin! You invite him to withhold his bounty!" Mumble insists that his tap-dancing can't cause a famine, clearly it must be the ALIENS. Well, Mumble, if you didn't want the elder penguins to think you were crazy, talking about aliens certainly isn't going to help.

Indeed, now the elder penguins are convinced that Mumble, in addition to driving the fish away with his DANCING, is about as mad as a march hare. One of the elders even slaps Ramone and calls him "filthy vermin". Ouch, now we're bringing racism into this. Noah announces that Mumble is banished from the Emperor Lands, and Norma Jean protests. Surely Memphis will protest too, right?

Well, no. Instead, he tells Mumble that he must renounce his "so-called friends", his "peculiar thoughts", and his "strange ways" if he wants the fish to return. Jeez, way to be a supportive father. I know aliens stealing the fish isn't exactly an immediately believable thing, but neither is claiming that Mumble's dancing is the reason why there aren't enough fish to go around. What, do the fish hate tap-dancing so they're abandoning the Emperor Lands for warmer climates or something?

"Everyone knows that fish are afraid of tap-dancing! That's why you never see any fish on Broadway!"

Memphis goes on to say that it's his fault Mumble is the way he is, because he used to be a "backslider" too and it resulted in Mumble's egg falling off. He begs Mumble to stop with the dancing - not just so the famine will stop, but so Noah won't banish Mumble. But Mumble insists that he can't change, and thus Noah gives him the "get out of here" treatment.

"GET OUT OF MY SWAMP... uh, I mean, OUR EMPEROR LANDS!"

Mumble goes all Arnold Schwarzenegger on Noah and tells him in a rather threatening manner that he'll be back... just as soon as he finds out what's happening to the fish. He and the Five Amigos leave, and Mumble decides that he'll go to Lovelace so he can help him talk to the aliens. But when they get there, they discover that he's being choked by the six-pack thing. Through charades, he tells them that he's never actually met a "mystic being" - he got the six-pack thing stuck around the neck when he went swimming. Mumble tells Lovelace to show him where he found the six-pack thing, hoping that they'll find whoever left it there and they'll be able to take it off. To do this, they'll have to go beyond the Land of the Elephant Seals. And they'd better hurry, seeing how Lovelace is probably dying.

But first, Gloria finds them and starts singing. Uh, hello? Lovelace is choking? He needs to get that thing off? Time is of the essence and all that?

"I don't know why I'm not thrilled that the girl I totally have he hots for has decided to come with me."

Mumble and Gloria argue while the Five Amigos do commentary on it, then Gloria dubs Mumble a "stubborn hippity-hoppity fool" (that's telling him) and storms off. The Five Amigos start singing, but Mumble agrees with me and tells them, "No more singing."

Soon, the seven of them arrive in the Land of the Elephant Seals.

I love elephant seals, too.

The elephant seals (Steve Irwin, Nicholas McKay, Tiriel Mora, and Richard Carter) warn Mumble that if he goes to the Forbidden Shore, he'll run into the aliens. "Cut you up as soon as they look at you," they claim. "Waste every living thing in their path."

Next, the Five Amigos plus Two trek through Blizzard Country, then arrive at the Forbidden Shore, where monstrous fishing boats await. As does a bunch of trash floating in the water.

Remember, folks - when you litter, you're hurting wacky Robin Williams-voiced penguins.

And guess who else is there? An orca! And orcas, much like leopard seals, eat penguins. Sooooooooooooo, yeah. The seven of them are in trouble...

If this suddenly turns into an advertisement for SeaWorld, I'm turning the movie off.

On the bright side, while being tossed around by the orcas, Lovelace manages to slip out of that six-pack thing. After getting away from the orcas, they encounter some fishing boats. The Five Amigos think that they've done all that they could do, but Mumble refuses to give up. Off the cliff he jumps...

"DO A FLIP!"

And into the water he lands, determined to follow that fishing boat and stop the "aliens" from stealing their food. He swims after that boat farther and farther than any penguin has ever gone before, eventually washing up, exhausted, on the shores of Australia, where he's found by humans and placed in an aquarium.

Now we finally get to see what these "aliens" look like.

That's pretty alien-looking all right.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, they're motion-capture. In the 2000s, people were convinced that doing motion-capture animated movies about humans was a great idea. It wasn't. It resulted in films starring really disturbing-looking humans. Fortunately, this trend stopped after Mars Needs Moms bombed in 2011. I don't even get it, you couldn't just ANIMATE humans? You HAD to do motion-capture for them?

Narrator Lovelace tells us that when Mumble first saw the "aliens", they were just as the skua described - hideous, featherless, and flabby-faced. Mumble tries to talk to the "aliens", but humans don't understand penguin language, so it doesn't do any good.

I love how there's one kid just sitting there playing on some sort of device instead of, y'know, watching
the penguins. Depressingly, it makes the scene much more realistic.

According to Narrator Lovelace, Mumble is stuck in that aquarium for THREE MONTHS and eventually goes crazy and starts hallucinating. Yeah, this is where the movie takes a turn for the disturbing. It's honestly making me feel bad for liking to visit the aquarium.

Eventually, Mumble starts tap-dancing, which attracts a large crowd of creepy motion-capture humans. After that, he's released back into the wild and returns to the Emperor Lands, telling everyone that aliens have taken the fish - but they're coming to the Emperor Lands, and he thinks they want to help them! To communicate with them, they must tap-dance. Also, he now has a tracking device on his back.

They didn't surgically implant that into his back, did they? That sounds very, very painful.

Noah insists that there is no such thing as aliens, then does a 180 and chews out Mumble for leading the aliens to them. The penguins all start tap-dancing with Mumble while Noah keeps bellowing in that thick Scottish accent.

Then Norma Jean leads Mumble to the ice cave where a depressed Memphis is. "There ain't been one day," he says, "Not one day, that I done right by you." And he can't dance, since the music's left him or whatever, but Mumble convinces him to try, and soon he's dancing up a storm.

Maybe if cows learned how to tap-dance, people wouldn't harvest them for food...

A helicopter lands, and out step some "aliens". The penguins, even Noah and the elders, dance for them, and it isn't long before everyone all over the world knows about these dancing penguins.

"Boy, these Coca-Cola commercials have gotten weirder and weirder..."

So the penguins' dancing somehow convinces the government to ban fishing in Antarctica. Dance party ending time!

Didn't the 2010 Marmaduke movie end in a similar way?

I hate the fact that I know how that movie ends. What was I thinking going to see that in theaters?

What's the Verdict?

I honestly think that Happy Feet holds up surprisingly well. The animation, obviously, is REALLY good - Animal Logic is really good at having realistic animals do things that you wouldn't expect a realistic animal to do (for example, dance) and have it not come across as really off-putting. The characters are all likeable, particularly Lovelace and the Five Amigos. The voice actors all do a good job, with Robin Williams of course stealing the show, and I have to give major props to the filmmakers for letting professional voice actors like Elizabeth Daily, Dee Bradley Baker, and Carlos Alazraqui voice major characters instead of just handing their parts over to more celebrities. I do have some complaints, though... for example, there are way too many songs. And the motion-capture humans are reaaaaaaaaaaaaally off-putting.

Still, I'd recommend watching Happy Feet at least once. You'll probably like it. It's certainly not the BEST animated film released in 2006 (I personally prefer Cars... yeah, I know, I'm weird), but it's a pretty good film. Considering how big it was, I'm still surprised it isn't talked about that much today. You'd think more people would bring it up when the subject of 2000s animated films emerges.

* I do not condone violence towards penguins. If an actual penguin got hurt, that would not be funny.