Happy Feet Review

The technical claim is Savion Glover, who performed every one of Mumble's steps in a motion capture suit so the tap would land as real percussion rather than an animator's guess, and it works. The dancing has weight and syncopation that no drawn sequence would find on its own. George Miller wraps it in an Antarctic rendered with obsessive attention to ice and water, and two chase sequences, one down a collapsing ice canyon and one with a leopard seal, are staged with better spatial sense than most live-action action.

Then the film turns. Mumble ends up in an aquarium tank, live humans enter the frame, and a story about a penguin who cannot sing becomes an argument about industrial overfishing that finishes in front of a legislature. The swerve is sincere and badly joined, and the emotional logic of the first hour does not survive it. Robin Williams takes two roles, and the second, a preacher penguin with a plastic ring choking his neck, pulls focus from a lead already fighting for it.

Jackman's Memphis is an Elvis impression carrying real paternal shame, which is more than the script asks of him. The jukebox numbers stitch Prince to Queen to Stevie Wonder with actual wit.