HAPPY FEET
Australia, 2006, 110 minutes, Colour.
Voices of: Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving, Robin Williams, Magda Szubanski, Miriam Margolyes, Elizabeth Daley.
Directed by George Miller.
Yes, the director is the George Miller who made the Mad Max films. However, he also directed Babe, Pig in the City. This is his first film since Babe. It is a cheerful show with an ecological message.
It is also another of 2006’s several animated films featuring the animal world, this one with an appeal to children and adults. The characters are mainly penguins. It is fortunate for Happy Feet that so many of its audiences will have delighted in The March of the Penguins and will feel very much at home in this penguin world, remembering the mating, the long winter march, the hatching of the eggs, the family reunions, the threats of the sea leopards…
The animation is bright and breezy, the camera continually on the move, the screenplay full of songs and quite a lot of happy feet tap dancing.
The dancing is all due to Mumble (Elijah Wood moving from Hobbit to Penguin), who fell on his head while in the egg, and who finds he cannot sing like all the other Emperor Penguins, especially his firend, Gloria (Brittany Murphy). Mum and Dad can sing because they are modelled on Marilyn Monroe and Elvis. Nicole Kidman voices and sings Mum like Marilyn and Hugo Weaving does an Elvis voice impersonation as Dad. In fact, the voice cast is top notch. Robin Williams goes zany again as Ramon, a Latino fairy penguin with attitude, as well as Lovelace who has set himself up as something of a guru for the fairy penguins. Williams has plenty of opportunity to be manic, enjoyable so.
Hugo Weaving has a Scots accent as the penguin elder who is conservative, resists change and exiles poor Mumble. Anthony La Paglia is the chief of the predatory birds. Magda Szubanski is the singing teacher and Miriam Margoyles the penguin diva. There are other predators as well as some menacing sea leopards (amongst whose voices we find Steve Irwin).
While the film goes back over the routines of the penguins in winter and summer and introduces the theme of their singing, there is also the theme of the lack of fish for sustenance, the sea leopards and the whales and Mumble’s discovery that the aliens in their fishing boats are depleting the waters.
But Mumble’s main talent, since he can’t sing, is that he’s got rhythm. And it manifests itself in his happy feet. The feet movement, the tap dancing rhythms and the music are quite infectious. You want to dance and prove that you have happy feet.
It all comes together at the end: the humans taking note of ecological needs, the penguins surviving – and all of them dancing.
1. The popularity of the film world-wide? Animation and style? Music and dance? Verve? The rhythms of Happy Feet? The environmental message?
2. Audience response to penguins, the popularity of the March of the Penguins, audiences, especially younger audiences, familiar with the background of penguins, the Antarctic, their migrations etc?
3. The Australian technical side of the film? US-oriented?
4. The environment, the penguins, their march, the long night, the icecaps, hunger, the sea leopards and their threats, the underwater sequences, the predatory birds? The world of the humans, machines? The zoos, the animals trapped, the tagging for environmental enquiry, the preservation of the penguins, green and environmental movements? International resolutions?
5. The picture of penguin life, the documentary style, the march, the mothers remaining, the fathers and their trek, holding the eggs between their webbed feet, the eggs – and Memphis losing Mumbles’ egg? The dangers? The return, the hatching, the finding of the mothers? The singing? The ethos of the group of emperor penguins? The small fairy penguins? Survival, threats?
6. Norma Jean and Memphis? The background and style of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis? Their abilities to sing – in Marilyn’s and Elvis’s style? Their love for each other, parents, talking, the process of the egg, the hatching, Memphis and the fall? Mumbles emerging? His inability to sing? His automatically happy feet? His ability to tap-dance? His being considered odd, his parents’ worried reaction, his father and his shame?
7. Mumbles, his character, his love for his parents, his friendship with Gloria? Going to singing school and Miss Viola unable to teach him? Mrs Astrakhan and her being a diva, her sense of failure? His continuing to dance? Noah the Elder and his dim view, condemnation? Mumbles finally being condemned and exiled? Mumbles and his meeting with the fairy penguins, with Ramon and the others, joining with them? Their going to Lovelace to find out the truth? The encounters and discussions with Lovelace? Finding that he was a fake? The adventures, the threats of the sea leopards, the birds and their threats? His adventures with the fairy penguins, the dangers? Struggles, finding the world of the humans? His being captured, to the zoo, his bewilderment in the zoo, walking into the glass? The children and the adults watching? His being returned, the tag, his joy, reunited with his parents, the community?
8. Gloria, the contrast with Mumbles, her ability to sing? Her songs? Sharing with Mumbles, wanting to share his adventures? Mumbles being protective of her?
9. Ramon and the fairy penguins, their Hispanic accents? Lovelace and his authority, his arrogance, his being unmasked? The plastic around his neck – and his being saved by Mumbles?
10. The community, all thinking alike, Noah and the elders, their authority, traditional and conservatism? Their having to change at the end – even to dance?
11. Mumbles’ return, the promise of the helicopter, the fish? The reconciliation? Memphis and his change of heart? Mumbles still not able to sing? The infectious nature of the dancing and the rhythms – the sound of the tap, everybody dancing?
12. The ecological message, tagging and preservation? The happy ending and everybody with happy feet – including the audience?
