The animated film Happy Feet, directed by Australian George Miller, is certainly a very creative and entertaining idea. It almost seems as if George Miller and the other writers, Warren Coleman, John Collee, and Judy Morris watched the 2005 documentary, March of the Penguins, and said to themselves, "Hey! Penguins have such cute naturally rhythmic waddles. What can we do with that? Wouldn’t it be cute if penguins could tap dance as well as waddle? I know! Lets make an animated film about singing and dancing penguins!" And thus the animated musical Happy Feet may have been born!    View Movie Trailer through IMDb.com

The plot of the film comes as a surprise being as how the trailers only show penguins dancing, singing, and generally acting goofy. While the plot certainly is cute, making singing and dancing pertinent to the story line, and a useful environmentalists' cry for a red alert, I remain convinced that the plot is merely an excuse for creating singing and dancing penguins. The film takes us to the very same moment that March of the Penguins took us to – the season of penguin courtship in the month of March. Only in Happy Feet, we are introduced to a penguin couple, Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman), a spoof on Marilyn Monroe, and Memphis (Hugh Jackman), a spoof on Elvis Presley, who conceive Mumble (Elijah Wood), an unusual tap dancing baby penguin.

Baby Mumble must struggle with the conflict of not fitting in with his environment because, after all, penguins don’t tap dance; they only waddle. What’s more, penguins find their mates by singing to each other and recognizing each other’s voices. In the film, the penguins sing to each other pop and rock tunes they call their "heart songs." A penguin’s "heart song" is crucial to penguin courtship practices, and Mumble, conceived by Norma Jean and Memphis, ironically, tap dances.

Social ostracism leads Mumble to explore and stumble across six friends from a colony of shorter, mambo-dancing penguins with Hispanic accents. Later, when the elders look for whom to blame for the colony’s fish famine, Mumble, joined by his short mambo-dancing friends, goes on a quest to find the cause of the vanishing fish. On the quest, Mumble's fancy foot work proves vitally important. 

The most magnificent attribute of the film is the animation. The animated drawings of the Antarctic look almost real and incredibly beautiful. Viewers can tell that the animators used real footage of the Antarctic found in documentaries like March of the Penguins, and other places as well, to draw on to create their animated Antarctic. It even looks like Miller and the animators used the exact same penguin colony found in March of the Penguins because the location of the colony in Happy Feet looks identical to the colony’s location in March of the Penguins.

The characters, too, in Happy Feet are very entertaining. Actors’ voices, such as Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, and Robin Williams, create very believable and entertaining personalities. Also, the music chosen for the film is very creative and well selected, adding to the entertainment level. Among the songs that can be found in the film are a rendition of "My Way," sung by Robin Williams, Elvis Presley’s "Heart Break Hotel," sung by Hugh Jackman, and The Beach Boys’ "Do It Again."

One negative point, though, is that the comedy level in this film isn’t what it could be. This isn’t a laugh-yourself-silly film; it’s more like a have fun and keep-on-smiling-film. And the film most decidedly is a lot of fun. All in all, this is a 4 Star film for its entertainment value and its creative idea. The world needs to see tap dancing penguins!