| Overall Grade: |
C- |
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| Story: |
C- |
|
|
| Acting: |
B- |
|
|
| Direction: |
C |
|
|
| Visuals: |
A+ |
|
|
Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine
by Nope! (movies profile)
May 31, 2008
472
of
716 people found this review helpful
Anyone out there remember the scene in "A Christmas Story" where little Ralphie is holed up in the bathroom with his Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring, furiously decoding her secret message, only to find it's an Ovaltine commercial?
Yeah -- Happy Feet is like that.
It started out great -- fantastic, even. Then it just fizzled, kind of like a date that starts out really well until you discover they're a really bad kisser.
Kids will like the movie because there are cute dancing penguins and fun songs. This isn't really a kid's movie, though -- there are quite a few sexual references that will go over their heads. My 6 year old who saw it tonight will probably find it funnier 15 years from now.
Adults will like the movie because the music is terrific. Brittany Murphy isn't a half-bad singer, either, so kudos to her. Animation was splendid as well -- I was mega, mega impressed with the job they did on the snow. There is a scene in the arctic "desert" that shows snow blowing off of an ice shelf in a blizzard that is just breathtakingly beautiful. Robin Williams is hilarious as always and steals every scene he's in.
Everything's hunky dory until about an hour into it, where we find out that the poor little penguins are hungry because of the evil environment-destroying humans. The elder penguins in the tribe are spiritual, but complete jerks about it, so in addition to the tree-hugging message there's another message that spirituality is blind and ruins all the fun in life.
I'm not sure what Warner Brothers was thinking. They came SO close to having a winner and managed to shipwreck the whole movie in the last half hour! It's as if they slapped the ending together the night before the deadline.
I really resent paying $7.75 to be lectured. Happy Feet has taught me two things that I will put into practice from now on: 1. never, ever trust trailers and 2. wait to read reviews of a Warner Brothers movie before seeing it in the theater. If I had known tonight was going to be a sermon, I would have skipped the theater and waited to rent it at Blockbuster in 6 months.
It's worth seeing because of the music and animation -- but not anytime soon, and not with younger kids in the room. |
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