This thing here skittered on the edge of outright sheer brilliance yo, but dang nabit, it came up a little short in certain spots and will have settle for just being a pretty darn good movie.  ‘Happy Feet’ tells the tale of Mumbo the Emperor Penguin as voiced by Elijah Wood.  To find their mates, the Emperor male penguin sings a song which the female penguin will answer with a song of her own.  It is a good thing this doesn’t happen with humans because that would mean that this guy I went to high school with, who will stay unnamed, would have the gotten all the ladies which would have just been awful for the further propagation of the species because he didn’t like... care for the ladies to much if you know what I mean.  So Mumbo’s honey voiced parents Memphis (Hugh Jackman) and Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman) end up producing a penguinling (?!?) that can’t sing a lick.  To make matters worse for young Mumbo, he has a severe thing for Gloria (Brittany Murphy) who has the most lovely voice of all the penguins in the land.  But though the boy couldn’t carry a tune in a leak proof bucket, he has dance moves that would make Fred Astaire and Gregory Hines step aside and whisper ‘whoa’.

Sadly this little gift of his forces Mumbo to go all Rudolph on us as his peers won’t allow him to play in any penguin games, and the elders blame pretty much blame him for the reason the fish supply has dried up.  Oddly enough, I can see how a dancing penguin could possibly cause a shortage of fish.  Now on his own, Mumbo journeys onward, along with his new found Hispanic friends lead by Ramon (Robin Williams) to find himself, find his place, solve the mystery of the missing fish, find the front eyed alien penguins and guide Santa’s sleigh!

‘Happy Feet’ had a lot of different elements that director George Miller was shooting for.  In one sense, it’s a story about being yourself, then it’s a cautionary tale about following the masses and believing the hype, then it turns into a big environmental morality play while all the while being the first 3D animated feature that could legitimately be called a musical.  There were moments in this film that were funny, witty, and clever, rivaling Pixar’s best, and graphically speaking, it probably surpasses the best that Pixar has ever offered up as the environments and their surroundings were darn near photorealistic.  A lot of the best humor offered up in ‘Happy Feet’ is provided by Robin Williams, who with the animated medium has obviously found the perfect vehicle for his rather unique voice skills.  Similar to the inferior ‘Robots’ in which Williams was the best thing going on, Director Miller decided to squeeze every nickel out of whatever they were paying the man and give him two roles.  The aforementioned Ramon, and the love guru / prophet Lovelace, and both characters were totally hilarious.  Miller  straddled a fine line with some of the humor, being as some of it was bit adult in it’s content, and as such ‘Happy Feet’ earns it PG rating honestly.  But the somewhat adult themed humor wasn’t overt, distracting or uncomfortable so I don’t believe parents are going to need to pull the kiddies aside to explain anything.  Besides, after watching ‘March of the Penguins’ I think most of are familiar with the mating rituals of Emperor Penguins anyway.

There were certain spots though, where it seems as if things just didn’t quite integrate properly.  There certain stretches of the film in which scenes ran a little too long and this may have been to indulge the animators who had to have worked their little mices off to create some of these long, drawn out and ultimately boring action sequences.  And the over-fishing environmental angle seemed like a tacked on afterthought.  It wasn’t until a good hour in the movie that we were even made aware that there even was fish shortage.  How a tap dancing penguin can stop nations from doing things that a boat load of PhD’s couldn’t do is beyond me, but hey, it’s a movie!

Ultimately, ‘Happy Feet’ was a total joy to watch.  Besides, it also had nice rendition of ‘Boogie Wonderland’, which is widely recognized (by me, and I am wide) as the greatest Disco song ever.  No, not ‘Disco Inferno’, not ‘I Will Survive’ not ‘He’s the Greatest Dancer’ but ‘Boogie Wonderland’.  With great voice acting, eye popping visuals, old pop music and an overt moral message ‘Happy Feet’ is one for the vault.