Have movie watchers become so desperate for entertainment they’ll immediately run to the first movie with cute talking animated animals? Apparently so, and Happy Feet is the prime example. Inconsistent, baffling, boring, and completely dull, this animated penguin flick is a complete disaster.
The sole benefit of Happy Feet is its look. This is some of the best animation you’ll ever see, loaded with incredible effects and stunning vistas. There’s nothing else like it in a crammed genre that is quickly running out of ideas.
That’s not enough to carry this film, one that feels amazingly disjointed and out of focus. The opening moments including a birthing ceremony are baffling, unexplained, and flat out terrifying for kids. The film then makes a desperate attempt at grabbing an audience with the dancing penguin routine multiple times over that have no point in terms of story.
The constant musical numbers are likewise pointless. The music is generic, loud, and completely uninteresting. Once you’ve seen a hundred dancing penguins, seeing it multiple times afterwards is just filler. Attempts at drama and action are also out of place. A seal attack looks like something out of Jurassic Park.
As for a plot, there’s not much here. There’s no sense of flow to the story, and scenes suddenly pop up on screen without a sense of how the characters got there in the first place. The “story” exists to show nothing more than animated animals in cute situations to win over the viewer.
Those looking deeper will find countless levels of innuendo, religious intolerance, racism, and human environmental destruction forcefully pushed into the running time. No kids will grasp any of this, but adults could only sit down at family time and feel awkward for most of the film. Things like this further the perception that Happy Feet has no sense of pacing or focus.
Happy Feet may gain the glance of the smallest children who simply want to see penguins on the screen. They may learn a thing or two about isolation and rejection, though even this main message could be ignored in the midst of everything else being thrown at them. This is an awful, disgustingly cute, pointless animated affair. 
If the film has any redeemable features, it’s that the HD DVD is quite possibly the best looking home video product ever released. There is nothing wrong with this disc. Clarity is simply unbelievable, compression is never seen, and the detail is unparalleled. Looking deep for flaws simply reveals more details such as individual snowflakes, feathers, and tiny touches in the visuals that help you appreciate the animation further. You simply can’t find a better video presentation on the current market. 
To sweeten the deal, Warner decided to up the offer with a TrueHD audio track that is also phenomenal. Bass is powerful, effective, and home destroying at high levels. That’s exactly how it should be. Surround use is immersive during musical numbers, and the few action scenes light up the sound field with spectacular movement in all channels.
Two unfinished scenes begin the set of extras, including one dedicated to the late Steve Irwin. A shorts cartoon from the Warner Bros. archives is followed by a five minute tap dancing dance lesson. Two music videos finish the meager extras aside from the trailer.
With a massive box office take, and being placed already as the best selling DVD of 2007, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to see a sequel coming down the line at some point. The shocking number of awards also makes the sequel idea close to a lock. Mumble is apparently cute enough regardless of the movie he’s in.
Matt Paprocki is the reviews editor for Digital Press, a classic video game website which he called home after his fanzine (Gaming Source) published its final issue. The deep game collection which spans nearly 30 systems and 2,000 games line his walls for reasearch purposes. Really. He has also begun writing freelance for the Toledo Free Press.
