Tell me more about the problems with this movie.
My first problem is the brain damage angle. The protagonist, what's his nut, Mumble? Yeah, Mumble. When he's still an egg, his father accidentally drops the egg in the snow. He's late to hatch. When he hatches, he's happy and dancing. He's obviously in possession of his full mental faculties, but is regarded as mentally retarded by his father because penguins don't dance. He can't sing like all the other penguins, and at one point, Mumble's father announces to their entire community that Mumble is brain-damaged.
Yeah. The sacrificial retarded penguin would make me want to punch someone in the throat, but it got worse.
Robin Williams doing a Latino accent. Ugh. All the wee little penguins (Adelie, maybe?) were hot-blooded saucy lazy Latinos, and the Emperor penguin community reacted to them... basically like Conservative Republicans react to Mexican immigrants.
Sacrificial retarded penguin gets asked to leave his community because he's bad juju and to blame for the fish shortage, and also his friends are ethnic and scary.
Then they go on a quest to prove that the bad polluting humans are to blame and that Mexicans and Retarded People Can Be Heroes Too No Really.
At this point, I decided to turn off the movie and put it back in my mailbox before I started using it as a discus.
And I'm pretty sure the Antarctic skua were voiced as Italian thugs, but I might be disremembering that.
Sounds like I can take Happy Feet out of my Netflix queue.
I still want to see Pan's Labyrinth, but I might take precautionary happy drugs beforehand. I'm a lot more sensitive than I used to be to scenes of physical abuse/torture.
I found
Happy Feet
deeply, deeply disturbing. There were also some pretty major structural problems with the narrative, but they were blown away in the end by the message that the best hope for environmentalism is for wild animals to learn to be more entertaining.
During the scene where,
he's banging his head against the aquarium wall,
the little girl (8?) sitting next to me tearfully asked her mother if the movie was over. The woman tried to reassure her, saying "No honey, this is a movie for kids, there will be a happy ending" but I don't think she bought it.
I'm a lot more sensitive than I used to be to scenes of physical abuse/torture.
Me too. There were at least 4 "watch through the hands" bits for me. I coped with booze.
the message that the best hope for environmentalism is for wild animals to learn to be more entertaining.
This took my breath away. The stepnfetchit saves the day moment...I nearly swallowed my tongue.
> During the scene where, he's banging his head against the aquarium wall
This made me cry as it brought back memories of my penguin wrangler days at Sea World SD. A little too close to home, though Emperors are well known for their lack of anybody home upstairs.
eta: oops, should I have whitefonted that? Better safe than sorry.
Oh god, I really liked Pan's Labyrinth but I was squirming and nauseated and making bleating noises of terror during those scenes. If I ever see Sergi López in person, I might accidentally flip out like a mammal.
Wait, what? Happy Feet came out last year, and the DVD was released in March. Do we still need to whitefont for that?
If I ever see Sergi López in person, I might accidentally flip out like a mammal.
Which I would have done anyway after seeing WITH FRIENDS LIKE HARRY... The man gives good enthusiastic creepiness.
I was too busy shaking my fist at the screen during the monkey/propeller beanie scene and swearing "As God is my witness, I'll never pay good money to watch another French film again!" to be properly creeped out by Lopez.
Okay, now I'm thinking I might need to watch Happy Feet, just to catch the full weight of the offensiveness.
Plus, my BiL showed it to my nephew, who loved it, and now I have to be prepared for possible discussion.
