Happy Feet is a tough one to try to reduce to a sin­gle stars-out-of-five rat­ing. It pos­sesses two extreme split per­son­al­i­ties, its lack of inte­gra­tion call­ing into ques­tion its integrity. Was there a strug­gle behind the scenes between a stu­dio want­ing another cookie-cutter car­toon ani­mal kid flick vs. a film­maker envi­sion­ing some­thing of substance?

The first film totally embod­ies the worst cliches of the con­tem­po­rary CG ani­mated film: danc­ing, singing ani­mals talk­ing the kind of stereo­typ­i­cal enth­nic jive that would be con­demned as racism in a live-action film. Peo­ple laugh at Robin Williams’ “let me ‘splain some­thing to joo” Mex­i­can schtick in Happy Feet, but feel queasy about Ahmed Best’s gay rasta­far­ian rou­tine as Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars Episode I. The cute­ness of see­ing anthro­po­mor­phized pen­guins shim­my­ing to con­tem­po­rary pop hits wears off fast, yet takes up at least half the film, sorely test­ing the patience of any adults forced to be in the audi­ence (in my case, it was a free work junket).

The sec­ond film is more in keep­ing with direc­tor George Miller’s track record with Babe: Pig in the City. A sur­pris­ingly dark and edgy film, the sequel to Babe was a stealth “real movie” that appealed to adults as much as kids, hav­ing more in com­mon with City of Lost Chil­dren and Brazil than Charlotte’s Web. After seem­ingly end­less, I say end­less, musi­cal rou­tines, Happy Feet slowly begins to reveal its true nature as an eco­log­i­cal para­ble. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for turn­ing kids into ecow­ar­riors, but many chil­drens’ films have man­aged to blend life lessons more fully into the nar­ra­tive; Toy Story II is about engag­ing with life, love and friends now as opposed to wor­ry­ing about the future or pin­ing for the past; Iron Giant is about break­ing the cycle of vio­lence; Happy Feet is about… either bootyshak­ing or over­fish­ing. I’m not sure, and nei­ther is the film itself.

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