Happy Feet, the number one movie this week, was completely off my radar. I'm tired of animal cartoons where every animal has a different ethnic accent. The lead animals always have white, middle-class voices and the supporting "animals" are...funkier and tend to speak in ebonics. This whole trend strikes me as borderline racist and extremely condescending.
The only reason I saw Happy Feet was because it made alot of money, it beat Casino Royale, it got great reviews and it was directed by George Miller (Babe, a film I loved). I had no interest til 24 hours ago.
Happy Feet is the first cartoon I can think of to tackle gay rights, arts education and enviromental concerns all at the same time. It's such a noble movie and I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. Late in the film, real humans are introduced and it makes for some interesting cinema on a purely technicial level.
Basically, theres a penguin who's "different" (gay) and loves to dance ( VERY gay), and the adults want him to stop dancing and start singing. He fails his music course and winds up in a zoo (an interesting sequence) where he tap dances for the humans who in turn decide to save the environment and stop over-fishing so all the penguins can live happily ever after and keep on dancing. It would have been amusing as a 20 minute short but as it is now, it feels like 3 hours.
Every time I was about to leave some scary seal or killer whale would try to eat the penguins so I stayed, hoping they'd succeeed, but they never did. Too bad!
March of the Penguins was one of my favorite films from the last few years. I love penguins! Happy Feet, not so much.
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