Not Quite Happy About Happy Feet

CommonSenseMedia.org rated Happy Feet “ON” for five years and older. But when Wonder Red tried to watch it at that age, she was terrified by the scene where the hawks nearly eat baby Mumble. She held on though, until the leopard seal attack. At that point she lost it, the TV went off and the disk went in the closet for two years.

We recently tried again, and this time she thought the chase scenes were funny. 

I wasn’t sure what to think. My first impression was “MoulinRouge with penguins,” because they borrowed Baz Luhrman’s approach of building an original musical story with Nicole Kidman out of tired and cheesy pop songs. As the standard coming-of-age, it’s-good-to-be-different plot began to develop, I thought it was a nice little kids’ movie. A little further, and I began to be concerned: a nice white boy from the conformist suburbs doesn’t fit in, gets into trouble, drops out of school and starts hanging out with Mexicans. Yes, they were specifically Mexican, thus hitting two of my film peeves, animated animals/aliens/objects who conform to human racial stereotypes, and famous white actors playing minorities. 

The environmental theme was a redeeming feature, and when Mumble swims off after the tanker, it felt like an ending. I wish it had been the ending. It would have been an unsettling, yet hopeful ending that would leave viewers with a sense of responsibility to act in defense of the arctic. It would have been unique among kids’ (and most adult) movies in refusing to tie everything up in a standard package at the end. But no, there was much more movie to come.

When Mumble landed in a zoo, I still had hope for something amazing because I couldn’t see a way from the zoo to your standard happy ending. I thought they had to do something unusual with the story, especially as he starts to go mad.

Being different is best when everybody does it.

But no, they managed to pack it all up and tie it with a bow after all. And they even managed to put the burden back on the birds. Mumble discovers that the key to survival is to become charismatic megafauna so the humans will care enough to spare you some fish. At least it’s true to life. Because everything else about the end is pure – well it turns out that being different is not good after all. It’s only good to be different when you can convince everyone else to become like you.

For me, Happy Feet was a mixed bag. There was a lot going on in the movie, and a lot of it was very creative. But it was also heading in so many directions that the impact was diffused.

For my girls, it was just a good reason to dance.