Mumble quickly meets a bunch of Latino penguins who are wowed by his dance moves and want to hang out with him. Once the fish supply becomes sparse, Mumble begins to think some outside force is to blame, but the elders (led by a crotchety old man voiced by Hugo Weaving) won't listen and ultimately use his outspokenness as an excuse to exile him for good. So the goodhearted Mumble is nonetheless a total outcast - though he should be the most popular guy on the iceberg with Savion Glover providing his tap moves behind the scenes through motion-capture animation. Even Gloria (Brittany Murphy), his one friend from childhood who happens to have the best singing voice of all, has trouble completely accepting him. The one talent he's had since day one, his dancing ability, is deemed weird among the other penguins. He's incapable of belting out his own unique song, something inside every penguin and something his parents both unquestionably possess: His father, Memphis (Jackman), is an Elvis sound-alike his mother, Norma Jean (Kidman), has that sexy, breathy Marilyn Monroe thing going. Young Mumble (Wood) is a little different from the rest of the penguins, the result of being briefly exposed to the elements while he was still in his shell. This should come as no surprise from Miller, a three-time Oscar nominee who co-wrote and produced the modern classic Babe. The filmmakers sent two research crews to the Antarctic to capture lighting, textures and landscape details to recreate them realistically in their computers the results are dazzling, unbelievably tactile.Īll that work, though, supports a story that has real meaning, that can be deeply poignant and isn't just a nonstop, madcap frenzy of color, noise and cutesy pop-culture references. The visuals can be both intimate and breathtakingly grand. Miller and a team of writers and artists vividly bring to life the penguins' mating process in Antarctica: the choosing of a partner the laying of an egg the long, agonizing stretch in which the father protects it from blizzard conditions and the eventual return of the mother with food for the hatchling. (You'll see several images in Happy Feet that also appeared in that film, though as director and co-writer George Miller points out, his movie was in the works long before March of the Penguins came out.) Irresistible, actually, just as they proved to be in the Oscar-winning documentary March of the Penguins. This time they're penguins - and they're cute. You've got your all-star voice cast (Elijah Wood, Nicole Kidman, Robin Williams, Hugh Jackman), your soundtrack that's chock full of pop tunes (Prince, Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder), and of course, your talking animals. That's also precisely what makes it so different from the inordinately large number of computer-animated movies that have come storming into theaters this year, despite the fact that superficially it may look so similar. It isn't afraid to mix in some substance with its style. Together with Lovelace and the Amigos, Mumble sets out across vast landscapes and, after some epic encounters, proves that by being true to yourself, you can make all the difference in the world.Like the classic animated Disney movies from decades ago - Bambi, for example, or Dumbo - Happy Feet isn't afraid to get a little serious, a little dark. In Adelie Land, Mumble seeks the counsel of Lovelace the Guru, a crazy-feathered Rockhopper penguin who will answer any of life's questions for the price of a pebble. Led by Ramon, the Adelies instantly embrace Mumble's cool dance moves and invite him to party with them. Away from home for the first time, Mumble meets a posse of decidedly un-Emperor-like penguins-the Adelie Amigos. Mumble is just too different-especially for Noah the Elder, the stern leader of Emperor Land, who ultimately casts him out of the community. Mumble and Gloria have a connection from the moment they hatch, but she struggles with his strange "hippity- hoppity" ways. As fate would have it, his one friend, Gloria, happens to be the best singer around. Though Mumble's mom, Norma Jean, thinks this little habit is cute, his dad, Memphis, says it "just ain't penguin." Besides, they both know that, without a Heartsong, Mumble may never find true love. However, Mumble has an astute talent for something that none of the penguins had ever seen before: tap dancing. This is the story of a little penguin named Mumble who has a terrible singing voice and later discovers he has no Heartsong.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |