Review: Happy Feet Two

This film about dancing penguins is somewhat convoluted —
something about global warming, perhaps — but the 3-D animation is
breathtaking. Elijah Wood returns as Mumble, who likes to tap-dance, but
it’s Matt Damon and Brad Pitt as two overachieving krill who steal the
show.

Starring: The voices of Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Pink, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt

Rating: Three and a half stars out of five

I
can’t say I’m 100 per cent sure what happens in Happy Feet Two, the
animated sequel that may be the last vestige of our so-yesterday
fascination with all things penguin, but a few things are clear: This is
a gorgeous feat of animation art, tap dancing is almost as much fun to
watch in motion-capture technology as it is on stage, and if you do it
with enough care, you can make any kind of creature — even tiny krill
— funny and interesting.

Starting with the krill then: There are
two of them, Will and Bill, voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, and they
form the comical secondary story to Happy Feet Two. The tiny,
shrimp-like crustaceans have no physical personalities to speak of —
they’re pink, have bulbous eyes and lots of little legs, and all look
the same — but Will and Bill become an ingenious bit of subtext. Tired
of being whale food, Will wants to go off and re-evolve as a predator
(“I’m one in a krillion”) while Bill swims alongside, frantically trying
to talk him out of it. Their adventures climbing the backs of big seals
or getting trapped with humans form a simple and amusing counterpoint
to the complicated shenanigans up on the icebergs, where all heck is
breaking loose.

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Taking its cue from Happy Feet — the similarly
muddled 2006 movie that established a world of Emperor Penguins that
speak with their feet — Mumble (Elijah Wood) has grown up into a daddy,
although he is still covered in baby fur. His wife Gloria (Alecia
Moore, a.k.a., Pink, replacing the late Brittany Murphy) sets the tone
of anything-for-some-rap in an opening number of tapping to a soulful
beat. For some reason, their son Erik (Ava Acres) goes off with lovelorn
Ramon (Robin Williams), the Adelie penguin from somewhere Spanish, to
meet Lovelace (Williams again), the Rasta Rockhopper penguin in a
colourfully knit sweater, and Sven (Hank Azaria), a Finnish penguin who
can fly. This is because Sven is really a puffin, but no one knows this
until the end. Oops. Avian alert.

They all then troop back to the
Emperor Penguin colony, which has in the meantime become devastated by
the collapse of their iceberg — something to do with a large wave,
apparently — and must be rescued. This involves further tap-dancing, as
well as the help of Brian (Richard Carter), an elephant seal with an
unaccountable Australian accent.

I don’t think I was the only one
who was nonplussed by the plot: “What did they knock down?” asked a tiny
audience member at a preview screening, as the creatures did a loud
dance to send a snowy cliff tumbling into the colony. It’s a good
question, although it probably doesn’t matter much, not with Bill and
Will popping up occasionally to challenge evolution and with the
stunning images on-screen.

Computer animation has become a
legitimate art form, and Happy Feet Two creates bulbous-nosed animals,
underwater chases, and shimmering Northern lights of realism and beauty.
Each feather is discernible on each bird, and when humans enter the
story — the penguins know them as “aliens” and, because of their taste
for barbecued chicken, “bird-eaters” — they are smoothly integrated
into the palette.

Director George Miller films it all in three
rich dimensions that occasionally pop into the audience, causing much
delight (although not as much as the preview for Journey 2: The
Mysterious Island, in which Dwayne Johnson sends a berry flying into the
seats by flexing his chest muscles). Whatever is going on in Happy Feet
Two, it’s remarkable.