It's good to be a penguin, especially in Hollywood. "Happy Feet Two," the sequel to the 2006 animated favorite, continues the story of Mumble (voice of Elijah Wood), an emperor penguin who, though he can't find his heart song, expresses himself through dance. This time around his son Erik (Ava Acres) feels like an outcast because he can't get his feet to tap.
Penguins have been popular in pop culture for a long time, as witnessed by "Mr. Popper's Penguins," a recent Jim Carrey comedy based on a popular children's book first published in 1938. Instead of adhering to the source material, Carrey plays a self-centered executive who receives several penguins from his absentee father. The whole point of the book is lost in a mess of sight gags and pratfalls.
The original "Happy Feet" focuses on the real-life need for penguin couples to communicate in order to find each other in the colony. "The Pebble and the Penguin," a nearly-forgotten film from 1995, looks at a penguin ritual where the male presents a potential mate with a pebble. This onscreen ritual actually is sort of true for the Adelie penguins that build nests out of pebbles.
"March of the Penguins," a brilliant 2005 documentary, offers an honest, sometimes brutal look at the lives of emperor penguins in the Antarctic. Morgan Freeman documents the annual struggle of the penguins as they mate and then try to keep their eggs from freezing in the sub-zero temperatures. Director Luc Jacquet and his crew capture some painful moments on film, including a bad transfer of an egg from mother to father.
The true breakout stars of "Madagascar" turned out to be the penguins. Voice actor Tom McGrath is hilarious as Skipper, the leader of a group of penguins who attempt POW-style escapes from the Central Park Zoo. These fowls were so funny that they earned their own Nickelodeon series "The Penguins of Madagascar."
Nuns wearing traditional habits have been referred to as penguins, which became the basis for one of the funniest moments in "The Blues Brothers." Kathleen Freeman, a well-recognized character actress, plays Sister Mary Stigmata, the head of the orphanage where Jake and Elwood Blues grew up. Nicknamed "The Penguin" by Jake and Elwood, Sister Mary Stigmata delivers a painful beating to both men as they repeatedly break at least one commandment in her office.
No penguin list is complete without a nod to Opus, the penguin protagonist of Berkeley Breathed's satirical comic strip "Bloom County." Breathed wrote a children's Christmas tale featuring Opus which became the basis of the 1991 animated short "Opus 'n Bill and a Wish for Wings That Work." As a flightless waterfowl, Opus wants nothing more than to be able to fly, and he asks Santa for some working wings.
Heading to the movies? Get an instant mobile coupon to use at select theaters for free popcorn!
There are no comments yet