Happy Feet (2006)

Whenever people have said about changing the world, making it a better place, one of the ways mentioned is educating the younger generation. Plant the seeds of information when the children are small, and even if their parents don’t listen, when the children grow up into adults they will hopefully carry through and act on the information they were taught when they were kids. This film is a perfect example of this, it is aimed on the level for children, the characters are appealing and memorable to them.

Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) is an Emperor penguin living in the south pole with his family and friends, but there is one big problem, these penguins were born to sing and that according to penguin nature, is the only way. Mumble however, cannot sing, instead he has a real talent for tap-dancing. This eventually leads to Mumble being cast out of the Emperor penguin world.

He then meets some Rockhopper penguins who loves Mumbles dancing and wants him to teach them. This is also a very good lesson to be learnt, just because you are not accepted in one place, doesn’t mean that you are not praised, encouraged or relished by others.

The Rockhopper penguins have a leader named Lovelace (voiced by Robin Williams) but this is not all as it seems. The rockhopper penguins not understanding the human world thinks Lovelace is someone special because he was bestowed an adornment around his neck. This sadly is a plastic frame work you find around the tops of a six pack of cans of beer, which has got caught around his neck whilst he was in a rubbish-filled area. After a little while it becomes clear that Lovelace is not as all knowing as has been declared and the plastic is getting tighter around his neck so Lovelace is beginning to struggle to breath. Mumble quickly sorts out getting help. This is another lesson in the ways of the world; just because a person is put in charge or is seen to be put in charge by a higher force, this doesn’t mean they know what they are doing in the long run.

A part where it gets a bit disjointed, is when Mumble ends up in a zoo and then we suddenly see him back with the Emperor penguins. There seems no explanation until a tracker is seen to have been attached to his back. These scenes are important to the film as it helps when it cuts to the human world to show them how over fishing in that area is causing problems for the penguins. But it doesn’t flow like the other scenes so well.

During this film, I was waiting and hoping for Mumble to grow and have a fully black face like the others, but he stays young-looking all the way through. Now I see for the sake of the film, Mumble had to stay just that bit different. To show, just because you are a bit different doesn’t mean you can’t still follow your dreams or make a difference to the world like he did.

This film is educational on so many levels for children and hopefully for the adults who watch it to. When I first started watching this film, I thought it was going to be an inspirational-follow-your- dreams-no-matter-what-type, but by the end I see it is so much more than that.

Hopefully the world or a small part of it, is, or will be a better place because of the messages in the film and let us hope many more like Happy Feet will be made.