Feet of Clay

My very first "official" movie review was sent to a few friends on March 14th 2007. Ah, those were the days.

Yesterday afternoon was buy one get one free day at the local $1.50 cinema so we decided to see Happy Feet. Hoss might remember it as the $1.00 cinema in which we saw Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. (We must have been really bored) I also had a coupon for a free 46oz popcorn so we were really "stickin' it to the Man".

Anyway I hadn't heard much about the movie but I kind of expected it to be a message movie of some sort or another. Hoo Boy! Was that ever an understatement. Robin Williams had about three or four voices in the movie and despite his personal hairiness, he was mildly amusing in at least one of his roles.

As the story developed the preachy central themes seemed to be:

1. Man is overfishing the oceans and starving the penguins
2. religion is based on misinformation

And if you weren't on board with either then... well... you're just a knuckle draggin' moron! At least according to the movie creators (who are better than we are).

My favorite line came in what must have been the last 5 or 10 minutes of the film. The main character/penguin had been tagged by humans so as to lead the scientists back to the penguin colony that has an affinity for the performing arts. Video is captured of the penguins in a 1940's-esque massive Hollywood dance number and the scene is then cut to what looks like a control room of some sort with the dancing penguins video being played in the background. The humans watching seem to be in a panic as to what to make of this discovery and one amazingly concludes "We must put an immediate hold on all ocean harvesting."

Hmm. Now to be fair I was taking my nephew out of the theater to go to the bathroom at the time of this quote so I do not know if that particular "scientist" was laughed out of the room, but somehow I doubt it. Even though movies are built on the suspension of disbelief, I found it more feasible that an emperor penguin could dance than discerning that Man should stop fishing because of a thousand dancing penguins. Just what neurons need to fire and in what order to make that correlation?!

On a positive note the computer animation was brilliant and they did have one good scene in which the main female penguin did justice to a little known song by Queen.


p.s.- the "46oz" popcorn was in a 46 fl.oz. bag so there was actually only about 1 oz. of popcorn in it. However there was free re-fills on the large drinks.


Happy Feet trailer, if you dare.
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey trailer.