Ok, so let me get this straight: they’re penguins. They sing, they dance. A lot. Robin Williams voices every third bird (far as I can tell). Their kneeless waddle is the joke of the animal kingdom, and yet, these guys have no sense of humor. It’s kinda like “Glee.”
Mumble (voice of Elijah Wood) the dancing-not-so-singing emperor penguin is now grown up with a li’l pingwing of his own. And despite everything he learned being Mr. Happy Feet, the hoofin’ it bird, Mumble makes a pretty lousy father. So much so that Erik (Ava Acres) runs away. I think we discussed this in Whiteout – it’s actually kinda hard to run away in Antarctica; nothing hides you, your tracks, or the fact that you’re gone. Erik eventually finds a colony of penguins who are even bigger washouts than the emperors; they worship a puffin named The Mighty Sven (Hank Azaria). Naturally, this prompts the other Robin Williams penguin to break into a chorus of “The Mighty [Quinn]” every time the puffin appears. Really? How many guys wrote this film?
Then Mumble retrieves the strays and proceeds to save an elephant seal on the way back and we all learn a valuable lesson about the power of will, even in the smallest of bodies. Awwwwww. This is pretty much Elijah Wood’s career theme, isn’t it? So what was up with his
cannibalism in Sin City? I digress.
The lesson comes in handy when we find the entire emperor penguin colony trapped upon his return. Despite a life entirely devoted to singing, dancing and ignoring any sense of responsibility, these creatures have somehow made no provisions in case of an emergency of any kind. Go figure. Anyway, in one of, roughly, two dozen not-so-subtle hints in Happy Feet Two that we’re destroying the planet, global warming separates a giant iceberg and rams it into the emperor valley, leaving them all trapped because they don’t fly and lack knees.
And then Rob Schneider says, “you can do eet!” and Mumble finds a way to save the colony.
Or maybe not.
It’s possible your children will like this movie. Its heart is in the right place and some of the medleys are very nice; at any rate, it sure beats the heck out of Sister Act. I’ll take these penguins over those penguins any day. The only characters I truly enjoyed in Happy Feet Two, however, were two superbly animated existential krill voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. I’m sure they were just intended as comic relief for the toddler into Jean-Paul Sartre, but for my money these two voiced the only worthwhile material in the film.
I suppose the 3D IMAX end credits were kind of nice, if dull. You’ll get no finer endorsement.
Rated PG, 100 Minutes
D: George Miller
W: Warren Coleman, Gary Eck, Paul Livingston, and George Miller
Genre: You can do eet!
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Your eight-year-old budding Broadway star/environmentalist
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Enemies of the penguin world
