For a movie called, “Happy Feet” the movie is not really all that happy.
The story itself is unfortunately overly convoluted and not particularly relevant to the lives of children.
The beginning of the movie follows the typical children’s movie fair. It follows the early like of the protagonist, Mumble. Apparently, these penguins for some reason have “heartsongs” that are basically just ripped off excerpts of a variety of pop music from throughout the decades.
Anyhow, since Mumble’s father dropped him when he was still in the egg he becomes abnormal, in that he cannot sing (only screech). However, as a compensation for this inability, he can apparently tap dance. This ability is not particularly unique though, as the other penguins seemed to pick it up rather quickly.
Eventually, because of his differences, Mumble is exiled from the group. This is the point where the film stops following the typical children’s movie formula and starts to get weird.
There were many political undertones that pervasively permeated the film throughout. In a way, they were making so many not so subtle suggestions that it was difficult to figure out what exactly they were trying to indoctrinate you to believe.
Ultimately, I think their over arching goal was kind of an anti-theocracy, socialist society promoting tolerance. Basically, if you just made Mumble gay, it would be basically contemporary accurate.
Then, of course, they beat you over the head trying to establish some kind of lame-assed ecological conservation lesson.
The bottom line is that children will either be scared by the violence, or bored by the politics. Either way the children lose out. I’m just said they are so blatantly throwing this shameful propaganda at the children of our nation.
Pity. I was looking forward to watching it, but I guess not. Somehow the combination of tap-dancing digitized penguins seemed cute, but alas, no longer.
brooke and i saw it. i was disappointed at how overtly political it was as well. the big-bad humans depleting the fish population was such a cliche, that at several points in the movie it overtook the light-hearted musical aspects that drew us in in the first place.
and oh, those tired old patriarch penguins, desperately clinging to their monotheism and anti-dance sentiments. i poked brooke whenever they would come on screen and said “cornerstone faculty!”
AWWWW THAT IS SO CUTE RUSS A BILLY
I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the film but i’m glad you got to share a moment with your female :-*
:-*?
:-*
:-/
you are a good man russ :-[
no slantz :-[
:-[
k :-[
Interesting…..
My four-year-old and not yet two-year-old loved it. This was the first full-length movie my youngest has ever sat through. Of course, maybe that’s because we have brainwashed our children into vegetarianism and the rights of minorities.
Scary…I know.
Heh. On the radio (NPR) they were commenting about how the “Christian Right” is upset with Happy Feet because of it’s political overtones, and how Michael Medred called it a penguin version of Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient truth”. They then mocked some up and coming parodies, and called into question the timing of these parodies – “Right around presidential election time”.