Happy Feet (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #5 extract: Happy Feet (2006)

An ingenious concept, brilliantly directed with beautiful imagery and some astounding action set-pieces. The songs are great and the narrative is imbued with a tremendous sense of rhythm and pace. Moreover, many of the characters are well realised, providing multiple moments of hilarity. 

The only down-sides to this narrative are the tone and subtext. Firstly, the tone is pretty cheesy and sometimes a little hard to swallow, intermittently capturing the worst sides of a malconstructed musical. Secondly, this film is a broad critique of religious fundamentalism, ignorance, pollution and over-consumption. In such, it is a meeting of Footloose and every movie about the teenage plight - all with political undertones. Without saying anything profound, this commentary comes off as a little reaching, not to mentioned cliched. 

Nonetheless, this is a pretty brilliant film and a good watch.