Happy Feet Two is a bit of a disappointment as the sequel to the 2007 Best Animated Feature Oscar winner, offering same formula that is the gimmick of singing and dancing penguins, this time with a few twists to attempt to keep the story fresh. Unfortunately, not all of these are convincing, and the novelty of it all has lost much of its spark.
As the original film followed Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) as a penguin who didn’t fit in, Happy Feet Two opens in the same fashion, this time following Mumble’s son, Erik, who can’t find his place among his fellow singing and dancing penguins. From this point on, the likelihood of this sequel simply mirroring the original is pretty great, but director George Miller seems determined to not let this happen, which results in both hits and misses throughout the film.
The first noticeable fact about Happy Feet Two is that the gimmick of seeing penguins sing and dance has largely outlasted its welcome, as while the visuals of it all continues to stun, it’s difficult to continue to find the same amount of enjoyment about witnessing big renditions of classic songs as sung and danced by penguins.
The story quickly throws this aside as it becomes more of an adventure style story, as Erik flees his homeland as an outcast and Mumble must find Erik and bring him home to his mother, Gloria (Pink replacing the late Brittany Murphy). From this point onward, the story becomes increasingly disjointed and hard to either follow or care about, as characters we’ve grown to love, see: Ramon (Robin Williams), are thrown aside as a multitude of new characters and voice talents, such as Common, Sofia Vergara, Hank Azaria, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, are added to a film already full of characters. While Damon and Pitt are enjoyable as Will and Bill the Krill, who flee their swarm and attempt to climb their way up the food chain. Unfortunately, the new characters spread themselves thin to create several one-dimensional characters, while throwing aside beloved characters from the original.
The adventure aspect of the film fails for the most part, as it never coheres together, and instead we see sporadic and often repetitive scenes. Thankfully, the visuals are consistently fantastic, as the film and world is given a visual depth, which when coupled with the more enjoyable scenes makes up for the disjointed nature of the plot. As Mumble and company encounter various adventure filled scenes, like saving the trapped elephant seal, Bryan (Richard Carter), which are interspersed with obligatory song and dance numbers, these illustrate just how sporadic the film is.
When global warming leads to a glacier trapping the penguins away from food and other sustenance, Mumble must take action — helped by the elephant seal Bryan, and Sven (Hank Azaria) as a puffin posing as a flying penguin — to help rescue the penguins. A major issue is that through all this peril, the overarching themes fail to make an impact on any other level, so we’re left with a disjointed and uncreative series of sequences, which simply look and sound good.
Happy Feet Two is a series of sequences which vary in how successful they are, but fail to cohere into a single narrative that works on any level. What it comes down to is that mild entertainment with dazzling visuals and a stumbling narrative can’t live up to the original.
Grade: C
Rated: PG (For some rude humor and mild peril.)
Happy Feet Two opens nationwide November 18, 2011.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.