

Voice talent includes Elijah Wood, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Brittany Murphy, Hugo Weaving and Robin Williams. March of the Penguins meets Riverdance, as Robin Williams says of the movie.

You'll also like the energetic soundtrack featuring the music of Prince, Pink, the Beatles, the Beach boys and others. Motion-capture technology used for Mumble's tap dancing was the same that fashioned The Lord of the Rings character Golum.
#Happy feet mumble capture movie
For this the crew went to the Antartica to capture the vista: the wildlife, water, the ice, the light.ĭirector George Miller who worked on the movie for three years calls his approach a "new level of photo-realism". Some 80,000 photographs were used as a reference to bring the birds to life. Though they might miss the message (how aliens, aka humans, can mess up nature) that Happy Feet tries to convey, your kids will love watching the DVD.Įven you will be overwhelmed by the realistic animation (the main penguin stars have as many as 6 million feathers on them) and the dazzling stunts. It would have been a better message to stick with being different isn’t a bad thing.Photo-realism and 6 million feathers make Mumbles one real penguin If “Happy Feet” had ended without the idealistic conservation storyline, it would have been saved. Brittany Murphy, who voices Mumble's crush Gloria, gets to show off her singing skills on songs like “Somebody to Love” for a wider audience, one that may not have heard her with Paul Oakenfold on “Faster Kill Pussycat.” His voice isn’t that recognizable, but stick around for the credits and his name appears. Jackman’s Memphis can be annoying with his fake impersonation.Īn interesting actor that lent his voice to a character is the late Steven Irwin, who voiced one of the Aussie elephant seals. Anything having Robin Williams voicing an over-the-top character is always appreciated in “Happy Feet” he actually voices three. There’s even a few rather scary portions that drove a few children that saw the preview to tears, including a scene involving a sea lion chasing Mumble and trying to eat him and some not-so-friendly looking elephant seals with Australian accents.įor older children it is a good feature film. Overall, “Happy Feet” seemed more like an adult animated feature than one for children, with more jokes directed to the older crowd like Mumble’s parents being a play off of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis named Norma Jean and Memphis (voiced by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman).Īnyone under the age of 7 won’t be able to enjoy half of the movie. There’s also a jarring introduction to live action characters - humans to be exact - when “Happy Feet” had leaned only on animation up until this point. Save the penguins, stop drilling, stop fishing and so forth near their habitat. Director George Miller used motion capture in order to animate the dancing penguins, specifically using famed tapper and choreographer Savion Glover as the movie’s primary dancer.īut the lightheartedness of the movie abruptly stops just before the ending as the message turns from a story about a penguin to a message about conservationism. The technological aspects to the movie are admirable and exciting. “Happy Feet” is basically the penguin version of “Footloose,” minus Kevin Bacon.

Mumble plans to prove he’s correct and he’s not about to let the rest of the community stop him from doing what he loves. Mumble seems to think that everything has to do with the featherless penguins that have taken over certain parts of the land. He befriends a group of smaller penguins and they travel around looking for answers. He becomes inquisitive about the outside world, especially in regards to the fish shortage the penguins seem to be having. What he does is tap dance, and that’s nothing normal in his community. He actually can’t carry a tune, any time he tries to sing it comes out as a loud squawk. Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) cannot find his heart song. Without a heart song, a penguin is destined to be an outcast and alone. To find their soul mate, these penguins must find their heart song - the song that attracts a mate. "Happy Feet's" Emperor penguins spend their lives living in harmony, figuratively and literally. Why should conformng be the most important thing in someone’s life? If fitting in and going along with society means giving up hopes and dreams, maybe normality isn’t the best thing. Sometimes being abnormal isn’t a bad thing.
