Happy Feet
Directed By: George Miller
Starring: Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brittany Murphy, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Hugo Weaving, E.G. Daily, and a motion captured Savion Glover
| Studio: Warner Brothers Year: 2006 Rated: PG Film Length: 108 minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Subtitles: English, Spanish, French Release Date: March 27, 2007 |
I don't sing. I don't dance. I don't like to be around people who do.
-David Letterman For anyone who saw "March of the Penguins" and noticed the conspicuous absence of large scale musical production numbers... For anyone who saw "The Jazz Singer" and noticed the conspicuous absence of Antarctic wildlife... George Miller has made the film for you.
The Film
"Happy Feet" tells the story of Mumble (Wood as an adult, Daily as a child, Glover when he's dancing). Unlike every other emperor penguin, Mumble cannot sing, but he is a heck of a tap dancer. This makes him an outcast in his community since every penguin is supposed to have a heart song and dancing is "just not penguin". This is a source of embarassment for his father, Memphis (Jackman), although his mother, Norma Jean (Kidman), is a little more understanding. Mumble gains some self-confidence from his childhood friend Gloria (Murphy) and a group of rockhopper Penguins he befriends, but just as he is about to get the whole penguin population dancing to his tune, he is scapegoated by Noah the Elder (Weaving) for being the reason that the penguin gods are not providing them with enough fish. Mumble decides he must find and talk to the "aliens" (aka humans) who are the real source of the declining fish population.George Miller does not stray far from familiar territory with his first fully animated (CGI motion capture) film. The plot and characterizations borrow heavily from his previous "Babe" films with their plucky runt-of-the-litter/gotta-be-me protagonist. The cuteness factor is off the charts, at times to the detriment of the film. Fluffy baby penguins are inherently cute, singing and dancing penguins is an allowable conceit for a musical film, Elijah Wood voicing a character is a sufficient excuse for him to have exaggerated big blue eyes, but having Jackman and Kidman voice characters named Memphis and Norma Jean in faux Elvis and Marilyn Monroe voices is pushing too hard for characters who are not intended as comic relief.
The excessive cuteness is mitigated by some occasional dark turns. Comic relief is provided by Robin Williams, who voices two different rockhopper penguins: Ramon - the leader of a gang of fiery Latino-voiced penguins, and Lovelace - a respected guru with a Barry White voice who wears a mystic artifact around his neck that looks suspiciously like a plastic ring from a six pack. Lovelace serves as narrator during parts of the film, mostly in the beginning long before he is introduced, but this device seems a bit lazy and unnecessary. Running gags about how humans are perceived by the various animals are consistently pretty funny.
The music is a mishmash of contemporary songs a la "Moulin Rouge". It's fun to try to pick out all the songs that are being blended during the medleys, and the conceit of each penguin having its own heart song that is sung in hopes of attracting its mate creates a novel excuse for the medleys to be employed in some of the big production numbers. Of the topline celebrities doing their own singing in the film, Brittany Murphy comes off the best. She should do more musicals.
The Video
The transfer looks clean and detailed. Halos are present around high contrast edges. They are low in intensity, although there are second order halos visible. They are barely noticeable on small to medium size displays, but very annoying on large projection set-ups. Compression artifacts are occasionally visible, frequently around the aforementioned edge halos.The Audio
The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, encoded at 384 kbps, makes very dramatic use of all of the discrete channels, creating a pleasing, enveloping, three-dimensional sound field. Why the disc producers did not go with a full 448 kbps bitrate for a film so dependent on its music, I do not know, but to my ears, fidelity does not sound wildly out of line with most modern DD5.1 tracks. Spanish and French 5.1 dubs, also encoded at 384 kbps, are available, but I did not review them.The Extras
When the disc is first started, the viewer is treated to skippable promotional trailers for "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", "Fred Claus", "IMAX Deep Sea", "The Nativity", and "Nancy Drew". This is followed by a PSA on sustainable seafood that ties in with the movie's theme and a tri-fold card insert to the DVD case rating various types of seafood for the environmentally sustainable way in which it is harvested. All of the above are presented in 4:3 video and Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, with the film trailers other than "Deep Sea" letterboxed.The extras menu looks jam-packed, going on for three pages, but when you actually view them, they do not add up to much. All of the extras are presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 192 kbps.
First, and most significant, is a deleted scene entitled "Mumbles Meets a Blue Whale". In a 55 second introduction, George Miller relates how "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was originally brought on to the project to play an albatross in a scene where Mumbles encounters a whale in the ocean, but as they reworked the screenplay, Irwin's vocal cameo was switched to the part of an elephant seal. The filmmakers went back and finished the albatross and whale scene, which runs two minutes and 20 seconds including a closing title card paying tribute to the late Irwin. Both the introduction and the deleted scene are presented in 16:9 enhanced video. The actual scene is matted to the film's 2.35:1 theatrical ratio.
Next up, is a 28 second animated clip, presented in a 16:9 enhanced 2.35:1 aspect ratio called "A Happy Feet Moment". It looks like a gag, which I will not spoil, cooked up by the animators on a slow day. It is the type of thing normally considered perfect for an "Easter Egg". Egg-haters will be pleased that they do not have to search around the menus or enter complex remote commands to access this clip.
"Dance Like a Penguin: Stomp to the Beat" is a five minute and 20 second featurette, presented in 4:3 letterboxed widescreen, focusing on tap-dancer Savion Glover. Do you want to learn to dance like Savion Glover? Let me save you five minutes and 20 seconds and tell you that you need to work hard for a long time and have good balance. There is a tiny bit of cute animation where baby Mumbles interacts with Glover and a blink and you'll miss it shot of Glover in the motion capture suit early on, but the featurette is really just useless fluff.
The disc also offers two music videos. Gia's "Hit Me Up", running three minutes and 21 seconds and presented in a 16:9 aspect ratio letterboxed in a 4:3 frame, is a standard quick cut and close-ups music video with the singer and a lot of background dancers that the editor will not let you see dance for more than a half second. A few film clips are peppered through the video's later half. Prince's "The Song of the Heart" is a three minute song that sounds like Prince wrote it in about three minutes and thirty seconds after reading a synopsis of the film's plot. The video, presented at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio in a letterboxed 4:3 frame, consists entirely of clips from the film.
"I Love to Singa" is a classic 1936 Merrie Melody short from director Tex Avery. It offers a similar "I Gotta Be Me" storyline to "Happy Feet" (...and "Babe", and "The Jazz Singer", and ...), but gets it done in an efficient eight minutes and eleven seconds. It is presented in its original 4:3 theatrical aspect ratio. While this short has been previously released on the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Two", this is its first appearance on DVD properly encoded and flagged for playback on progressive displays.
The film's theatrical trailer is presented in a 16:9 enhanced 2.35:1 aspect ratio. It consists primarily of the character of Ramon singing "My Way" in Spanish. This footage is unique to the trailer. In the scene in the movie where the song is used, Mumble is lip-synching to Ramon's singing.
The extras menu promises some fun interactive DVD-ROM content, but nothing appears to be on the disc save the Interactual player "skin" and some web links. There was no non-promotional on-line content relating to "Happy Feet" at any of the links, but that may change come the disc's actual street date.
Packaging
The disc comes packaged in a standard hard plastic Amaray-style keepcase. The hard case comes inside of a cardboard slipcover that reproduces the same artwork as the hard case. The cover art keeps up with the "no cuteness is too much cuteness" ethos of the film itself. It shows Mumble as a baby surrounded by the tiny rockhopper penguins he befriends in the film. In the film itself, Mumble does not meet these guys until he is adult-sized. The only insert to the case is the tri-fold "Seafood Watch" reference card I described in the "Extras" section of the review.Summary
"Happy Feet" is a slight, breezy entertainment with a heartfelt, if heavy handed, ecological message. I don't necessarily agree with the folks who gave it the Academy Award as best animated feature of 2006 over Pixar's "Cars", but it is a pleasant diversion that is safe for family consumption and may get young children dancing in their home theater aisles. The video quality falls short of reference standard, but the audio presents a good rendering of a lively and engaging surround sound mix. Extras are plentiful, but inconsequential.Note: If you are interested in an assessment of the HD-DVD release of this title, check out Neil Middlemiss' forum review available at this link.
Regards,
