Both! This movie has great, I mean GREAT music. The animation? I've never seen its equal. The story? Good enough keep you going. Cute? Just look at that little fuzzy guy! What do you think?
Propaganda? No question about it. I saw a review on the news attacking the "mad-dog" right for seeing propaganda in this innocent little musical, but I wonder if he works Pravda, because anyone who says this movie doesn't have an agenda is either uneducated or dishonest. This little penguin is born different. He dances when all the other penguins sing. You'd think those two activities would go together. Not so! He finds himself ostracized. Who leads the movement against him? Well, the elders of the penguins, of course. These guys are old and slump-shouldered and lead the other penguins in worship to the great penguin who gives fish to the penguins that please him. These elders talk in American old-timey Christian language.
Christian archetypes as the bad guys? yep. Nothing new there, huh?
So, these elders become convinced that little Happy Feet is angering the Penguin god by dancing and that's why they don't have enough fish. The story goes on from there. Along the way, Happy Feet learns that it is okay to be himself and all that. He also meets some cool mexican penguins from a different penguin nation. They are all latino penguins and, predictably, the love dancing. No stereo-typing there, right?
Happy Feet also falls in love and wins the girl --or the penguin. Whatever.
The story ends, though, with Happy Feet defeating the religious superstitions of the elder Penguins by discovering man, winning man's heart, and bringing man home with him so that man could see that it is his fishing habit that is killing the penguins.
Man, once he sees the problem, takes the issue up in his legislature and wins the day. Then, he takes the matter to the UN who, presumably, ends fishing in the feeding grounds of the penguins and all live hapily ever after.
The movie ends with the U.N. controlling fishing to save the penguins. No, no political agenda in this movie. Those right wing mad-dogs! They're so paranoid.
Thoughts?
3 comments:
Good take as usual. I enjoyed the movie. No I take that back. I enjoyed watching my children enjoy the movie. Even my 16 year old was laughing.
Political? You bet, but what's different here? Man made the "right choice." Happy Feet completed a Happy Feat and the story had a Happy Ending. That we got a political movie out of this is not the surprise, how man was viewed and how man acted in this story is. What does that say?
It is so hard to "just sit back and enjoy the show" these days. My son is 7 and seeing the bent truths, couched lies, and twisted realities, and just plain wrong crap that is being spewed, which he doesn't yet recongnize as such, makes my blood boil. Ask my Wife, she gets a bit weary of being the choir getting preached to.
Yeah, Jerry, I know what you mean. And its normally us guys who boil the fastest. I went with my brother Mark and he was smoking mad.
Post a Comment