Happy Feet (2006)  

Review: written 26th May 2007

Infectious family fun, weighted down with environmental message

I guess Children's movies should come with some sort of moral or message.. but does it have to be as heavy handed as it is here..?

This is a beautifully rendered and infectiously entertaining movie about an individual finding and recognising their own form of expression -a wonderful moral tale in itself. The voice cast and animators all do full justice, and the accuracy of the penguins in terms of drawing and animal habits is astonishing.

However, on top of this the director (George Miller- Babe, Mad Max) has shoe-horned in a message about mans environmental impact in overfishing. It too is a good message, but feels oddly forced here. As a result, the final 5 minutes of the movie feel almost from a different story in tone, style and substance.

Rest assured, this is still a thumbs up event, greatly entertaining and with a great soundtrack of well known songs. What a great idea, using well known songs instead of writing them all for the movie.

Recommended - but I still wish they had not forced one message too many down our throats.