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Back in 2006, the original Happy Feet appeared as a strange exuberant animated version of March of the Penguins with added toe tapping songs, a clear environmental message and merrily waltzed itself Oscar glory. Its successor largely ditches the environmentalism and comments on penguin lifestyle in favour of a more traditional animated affair of father son bonding, and feels as a result a completely different movie.
The change in tone is hardly surprising as to make a sequel in the same vain as its predecessor would be extremely difficult to say the least, and it has to be said it gets off to a good start with an impressive opening musical number featuring hundreds of CGI penguins. Indeed, throughout the film, the set pieces are indeed very impressive and the animation is gorgeous, so there is always plenty of eye candy on display. The trouble is that in moving away from the model of the original they have not found anything much to replace it with in terms of story or ideas. The first half of the picture is filled with a series of perfectly enjoyable scenes that just don’t seem to connect, and it's only after forty-five minutes the main plot takes over. Mumble (Elijah Wood) and son (Avy Acres) have to save the penguin population after they are trapped by a giant iceberg, resulting in what can best be described as a series of fetch quests to bring different types of aid to their beleaguered compatriots. As a result the film feels incredibly bitty, a problem exemplified by the fact that throughout the film feels the need to have a secondary story to keep adults entertained. The plot-line following Bill (Matt Damon) and Will (Brad Pitt) as the existentialist Krill who search for something outside the swarm has next to nothing to do with main plotline. In fairness they are perhaps the funniest thing in the film for the adult audience (whether small children find philosophical musings entertaining seems unlikely), and indeed their scenes do not feel particularly out of place in comparison to everything, as the whole work seems more a collection of loosely connected scenes then a stable narrative.
What makes the film's problems worse is that other then Bill and Will the film fails quite badly when it comes to characterisation, and its hard to particularly care for them. It’s not a problem of voice acting which it genuinely very good (even pop star Pink (Gloria) steps up to the mark, though arguably it's more voice singing for her). It just seems that there are too many of them and that when introduced to a fluffy individual we’re automatically realise their distinct lack of personality.
That said the film is certainly watchable as the musical numbers are always very good toe tapping fun, and the visuals are very impressive throughout with some very well designed set pieces. Yet its story lacks decent characters, feels baggy and fails to form a coherent framework, meaning the film is in the end disappointing.
Happy Feet 2 is out now at York's Reel Cinema. For more information visit http://york.reelcinemas.co.uk/?
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