Happy Feet

Viewed: DVD

We rented this to watch as a family. I expected a light-hearted, silly movie, but it was a bit more than that, and it surprised me. Let me sum up the moral of the story: humans are bad, and religion is ignorance.

The music, singing, and dancing in this movie are all fun and entertaining. It does, at times, make you want to get up and dance. The songs in the movie are mostly all classic dance tunes from the 1960s-1980s, sung with new voices. It’s all good.

The main character, Mumbles, is an emperor penguin among other emperor penguins, but he can’t sing — doesn’t have a “heart song.” This is a sad and terrible thing among the emperor penguins. But Mumbles has the natural urge and ability to dance — something unheard of among the emperor penguins. This leads him to be ostracized and eventually banished from his species.

During his adventures, he becomes friends with a group of silly, carefree Adelie penguins, called the “Amigos.” Yes, the Adelie penguins are of some Spanish/Mexican-accent ethnicity. That’s a weird concept to wrap my brain around — penguins with accents — but it makes for humorous dialogue.

The seals and orcas, animals that eat penguins, are portrayed as vicious monsters. There are some intense scenes where Mumbles and friends are chased through the water and ice tunnels, and this came unexpected for me, too. I didn’t expect any real tense action in a movie about singing and dancing penguins. But, none of the penguins actually get eaten (swallowed).

After half-way through the movie, we start seeing how humans are overfishing the emperor penguin’s realm. Humans are the overall cause of great strife among the penguins. I’m really tired of movies about animals that show humans as only problems for the animals. It’s old propaganda. At least the human-induced problem in the movie isn’t global warming.

And for the religion bashing, the old patriarchs of the emperor penguins are shown as head clergy that strongly stamp out any new ideas or theories. At one point in the movie, they even try to get Mumbles to repent (they actually use the word “repent”) his dancing and his theories on there being aliens (humans) beyond the penguin’s realm.

Now, I’m not one to be bothered too much by human bashing or religion bashing in movies, though I do notice it when I see it. But in a kids movie, being sold as a happy, fun, light-hearted show, throwing in such propaganda is annoying at best, just plain wrong at worst. It’s especially bad when the negativity is completely unnecessary. There was no need to introduce humans into this movie at all, as good or bad entities, and there was no need to have a religious element in this movie at all, as a good or bad philosophy. The negative, background morals in this movie (humans are bad, religion is ignorance) were so unnecessary as to feel heavy handed.

The singing, dancing, and camaraderie in this movie are fun and entertaining. The main moral of the movie, stay true to your inner drive (dancing versus singing, in this case) is good, old-fashioned advice. But the other stuff, the propaganda, ruins the movie as a light-hearted, kid’s flick. There were complaints about The Golden Compass being anti-religion, but Happy Feet has more direct, obvious religion bashing.

There’s some penguin dancing throughout the credit roll, but there’s nothing after the credits finish.