During our Mixed Reviews days, ModFab and I would get together periodically to see a movie, and then discuss it over coffee. "Critics Over Coffee" was a popular feature, and we had every intention of continuing it after going our separate ways in the blogosphere. But Real Life got in the way, so a year has passed since our last deconstruction of a movie. But we were able to get together earlier this week to see the animated film Happy Feet.

We thought of podcasting our conversation, but because it took place in a crowded Panera Bread, there's just too much ambient noise, so here is a transcript of the discussion:



Jill: We are sitting at Panera Bread in beautiful Edgewater, New Jersey, where we have just endured two hours of Happy Feet.

Gabriel: Was it really that painful? You laughed a lot.

Jill: Yes, I did laugh a lot, but I'm not sure I laughed for the reasons they wanted us to laugh.

Gabriel: You know, when this movie was originally being developed, I think the original title was Transparent Diversity Lessons in the Animal Kingdom. But Happy Feet works a lot better. You know, as a person who has, "happy feet", and of course you have to realize that "happy" is in quotations. It's "happy"... which is a stand-in for other synonyms that mean the same thing...

Jill: ...imply a certain amount of joy and mirth and just generally making the world nicer for everybody around you.

Gabriel: And you know, for those people who haven't seen it, we should say up front that it's a tale of overcoming social ostracism, praising diversity through aquatic fish life and trips to the zoo...

Jill: It's about how parents of children with learning disabilities and other neurological disorders --

Gabriel: -- children who are...."happy" --

Jill: that all of their problems can be cured not through Ritalin or other medications, but through tap dancing.

Gabriel: Exactly. And you realize in the first 20 minutes that tap dancing penguins -- it's really a special needs kind of situation. And they're outcasts, because gosh darn it, they just can't stop dancing.

Jill: It's because penguins have natural rhythm, you know.

Gabriel: Well, that's true. But later, with the help of his five Latino short penguin buddies, who of course dance like jumping beans, and just can't control the rhythm inside them, the way all Latin "penguins" do -- they end up realizing that dancing is not mental retardation after all, but perhaps something that can be treated as an odd affliction; something you might have in a kooky bachelor uncle, let's say -- an odd eccentricity. But one to be cherished in sort of a wry way.

In the event my sarcasm isn't coming through on the recording, let me be clear: this movie is a walking cultural disaster. It's not that it isn't entertaining on some level...

Jill: It's a Robin Williams animated film. Which means that Robin Williams plays the Kooky Ethnic Sidekick. In this case, the kooky ethnic sidekicks are Latin and African-American. And it should be noted that the other three kooky Latino sidekicks are voiced by Latino actors. But it should be noted that there are no African-American actors voicing this film, other than Savion Glover, who provided the dancing.

Gabriel: But why would you need actual African-Americans, when you've got Robin Williams, who can fake it. You know, you sit there and watch it, and it's kind of witty, and the children around us are enjoying it, and you want to say that, but as you step away from the movie, and say OK, what is the message here; what is the moral here -- because really, children's films have become a morality lesson. What is this movie really trying to communicate, and I think what's upsetting to me about it is that under the guise of saying some important social lessons, it ends up reinforcing some bad social patterns. For instance, there's a lesson of tolerance of diversity of allowing difference and praising difference. But that's done in the context of saying, "If you're different, you're going to be ostracized and you must overcome that."

Jill: Right. That may be reality, but if you're trying to use that, but if you're trying to use --

Gabriel: -- but if your message is to celebrate diversity, that's a weird message to underscore. You should be celebrating it from the beginning, but it's a children's movie; how hard could it be? It doesn't seem that they know what they're doing. But as you noted during the movie, it's got this weird psychedelic 1960's component to some of the visuals.

Jill: Yeah. It's sort of like politically correct Fantasia. Some of the visuals are really beautiful and some of them are very exciting in that roller coaster theme park sort of way. There's a lot of running away from avalanches; the water is rendered really well. It's a beautifully-crafted animated film. Compare that to that movie Meet the Robinsons that we saw the trailer for. And what Pixar is doing now vs. what Disney studios are still struggling to do are like night and day. That trailer seems well behind what Monsters Inc. was, and that's already four or five years ago.

Gabriel: But the 60's thing that you were addressing. It kind of comes out of nowhere. It's kind of adult reference; it's a weird non sequitur. And there's a lot of those in the film. I'm not a prude, I mean, you read my site, you know that. But I thought there was some questionable animal behavior in this film -- some sliding around, some tucking of eggs, some weird beak interplay...

Jill: But the tucking of eggs and the beak interplay -- they might not have known when they planned out this film that kids would have already seen this, but everybody took their kids to see March of the Penguins. So they've already seen this behavior with real penguins.

Gabriel: OK.

Jill: Because the whole thing with tucking the egg is what they do. It's just that they made some off-color jokes. For example, when the baby penguin is going under the father to stay warm, he's told to watch the beak. It's the obligatory testicle joke.

Gabriel: That's what I'm talking about.

Jill: But that goes back to Aladdin, with the jokes that go over the kids' heads.

Gabriel: You're saying it all comes back to Robin Williams. He just can't keep the smut out?

Jill: Yes, it all comes down to Robin Williams. Because you have to have the jokes that the adults are going to like couched in the story that kids are going to like. And while we're on the subject of what kids are going to like, I may be overreacting here. But there are some scenes here that I think are really, really scary for young children -- the harp seals coming out of nowhere are very scary. The whales are very scary.

Gabriel: Let's talk about the pecking order of the movie. Because you represent a lot of endangered species in this movie -- harp seals, elephant seals, killer whales. And I think the point of demonizing those species -- I understand you have to have villains and heroes in children's stories. but to demonize those other species was kind of odd to me in a message that's supposedly about how life is precious.

Jill: Well, it's about how life is precious, but the fish the penguins eat are the only animals that aren't anthropomorphized -- because that's what the penguins eat. I mean, dead fish tell no tales.

Gabriel: Yes. And we see a fish that's kind of alive and kind of half-mutilated. Is it something that they went with a story that was not quite together; is it that they aren't quite sure what moral message they wanted to convey? They just had a good idea about a tapdancing penguin, and how cute that would be. And they fashioned this half-hearted story of diversity and tolerance around it.

Jill: I think that this half-hearted story of diversity and tolerance, as you call it, has become a stock part of children's movies. There has to be a moral. There's elements of this in Shrek. This sort of thing goes all the way back to Bambi -- Bambi's mother dies, and they burn down the forest...

Gabriel: Dumbo was the original fish out of water...

Jill: Yes, but Bambi was the first environmental Disney cartoon. So it's not that there's anything new here. What I find bothersome is that they wanted to put an environmental message in here, but the environmental message that they put in there isn't really the one you have to focus on. It really isn't overfishing that is the most serious problem.it's the ice blocks the size of Rhode Island that are breaking off of Antarctica every day that are the biggest problem.

Gabriel: Right. I was kind of intrigued that they didn't address global warming in any way. But also, part of this is, we're being very tough on this movie as a social construct. How much of it are we really -- it's always a question when dealing with material that is theoretically developed for children, how much responsibility do they have to these kinds of larger intellectual social issues and how much of it is a diversion for two hours for a person under the age of five.

Jill: Well, if the audience in the theatre today is any indication, this is not a movie that 8 to 12-year-olds are seeing. This is a movie being marketed to kids that are, let's say toddlers to around age 5...and they're not going to get the environmental message anyway. If they get anything, they're going to get the message that if they don't eat the fish sticks that mom puts in front of them, the ones they don't like anyway, it means they can save the penguins.

Gabriel:Right. If you don't eat the Gorton's fish sticks, you save a penguin. That's pretty good.

Jill: Yeah....every time you eat fish, a penguin cries.

Gabriel: (laughs)

Jill: God kills a penguin.

Gabriel: That's true. And if enough children can get together....I just don't know if it does much more than allow people an easy sort of emotional outlet for themselves. I made a crack in the movie about how Elijah Wood plays the main penguin -- what's his name?

Jill: Mumble. He's like Frodo on ice.

Gabriel:Exactly. Well, that's the thing. He's being played by Elijah Wood, and this is basically a hobbit dressed up as a penguin, so he can make this journey to the land of evil to save the shire. It's almost embarrassing at some point to watch Elijah Wood have to do exactly the same thing he did in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Jill: Which is basically stand there and open his beautiful blue eyes wide, and this animated penguin has Elijah Wood's beautiful blue eyes -- and he's the ONLY one with blue eyes, which is either attributable to the fact that he's Elijah Wood and he's really a hobbit, or it's because of his...."happy feet."

Gabriel: I think's really got a lot to do with his "happy feet." He's not very interested in girls; I mean there's this one that he kind of likes, but he'd rather hang out with the boy penguins, and, you know, he's just gotta dance -- like every chorus boy on Broadway. I'm not going to say that "happy feet" means anything other than happy, but I got a sense that "happy" was a bit of a double entendre.

Jill: Well, this is why Bill O'Reilly and his ilk are having fits about this movie...because it's sort of a double whammy. You have the environmental message, and you have, well, let's face it -- "happy" penguins. And given that they're already having apoplexy about this book about the two male penguins at the Bronx Zoo who are nurturing a baby, but then again, these are the people who said that Shark Tale was a plot against Christianity too, so I don't know that you can --

Gabriel:Well, you know, God bless happy penguins, is about where I want to leave that. Because if you go there with that....all right, let's talk about some of the performances. Because I think there are some odd performances in this film. First of all, there's not a lot of facial expressions in these computer-animated penguins. So most of the performance is vocal. We talked about Elijah -- let's talk about his parents, played with odd southern accents by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. I don't really understand.

Jill: I don't understand what that was about either. It's like....his father is an Elvis impersonator, and he calls his wife "mama."

Gabriel: And his father is embarrassed of the child.

Jill: Yes, because he has......"happy feet."

Gabriel:He has "happy feet", but also he dropped the child --

Jill: He dropped the egg -- "dropping him on his head when he was a baby", as it were.

Gabriel:So there's also shame about the child being maybe retarded...

Jill: ...and guilt...

Gabriel:...and guilt, that you drop the egg and now your child is retarded.

Jill: And because he's retarded, he has...."happy feet."

Gabriel: Right. That's a mess, in terms of a storyline. The mother is showing loving your child unconditionally, but really there's no character there, other than that.

Jill: And she's ineffectual. This is clearly a patriarchal penguin society, for all that the males nurture the eggs. Now this is where this is not as liberal a movie as they like to say it is, because this is true with penguins -- that the women go off and fish, and the men stay home and take care of the eggs. But they did this whole patriarchal, very sort of Christian if I may say so, society, led by some guy with a Scottish accent who's surrounded for some reason by penguins who are old Jews. Now I didn't understand what the point was --

Gabriel:Were they Jews? Because they were praying to "the great Guin".

Jill: But the accents were very clearly Yiddish, and their beaks were hooked.

Gabriel: That's true; they did have the "hooked Jewish nose."

Jill: And they were the only penguins who had hooked noses.

Gabriel: But I think they have a very sort of scary demeanor about their religiosity, which I think was clearly meant as a reference to Christian fundamentalism. So there's that mixed -- they're Jews, but they're --

Jill: -- they're disguised Jews. Part of the reason for this, I think, is -- if you've seen March of the Penguins, when they have the shots of these penguins shuffling off to their mating grounds, they do look like a line of elderly Jews going off to shul. So it's kind of natural for all that it's a broad ethnic stereotype. I'm just not sure where the Scottish accent comes from, because usually if you're going to put a Scottish accent into a cartoon, it's because it's an accent that's funny. See also, Shrek.

Gabriel: Right. But this was not really funny, and -- all the old Jews were Cockney, the midget penguins were Latin, the parents were American southern rednecks -- is it an attempt to show some ethnic diversity within the penguin community?

Jill: That may be, but as you said earlier, it's diversity through stereotype.

Gabriel: Right. True.

Jill: But at the end of this movie, and I don't think I'm spoiling anything for anybody by saying this, you have -- humanity is awakened to the plight of the penguins by one penguin's willingness --

Gabriel: -- to shuck and jive --

Jill: -- to be Stepin' Fetchit. And I don't know about you, but I was reminded in that Zoo scene of that scene in Goodfellas where Joe Pesci is shooting his gun at Michael Imperioli's feet to make him dance.

Gabriel: Well, it's definitely the year's greatest cinematic understatement to say that the storyline in the last 30 minutes is a bit implausible. Basically penguins start tap dancing, and children take notice, and that leads to the United Nations passing a global fishing law surrounding Antarctica. I think it's easy moralizing, it's easy emotionality -- I would have much preferred if Mumble had just gone to the fiery pits of Mordor, thrown the ring into the lava, and then gone back to the shire. That would have been more plausible than the storyline we have.

Jill: (laughs) Or gone into the west, which would have been even more plausible, if he had just died in captivity.

Gabriel: Well, I don't know how many animated movies you see each year.

Jill: Not a whole lot.

Gabriel: I don't see a lot either. But is this the gold standard? Is this where we are with family entertainment at this moment?

Jill: I certainly hope not.

Gabriel: This sort of troublesome, inconclusive, present-day messages of pseudo-liberal dogma?

Jill: LAZY messages of pseudo-liberal dogma, with enough snark by Robin Williams to get adults into the theater. It seems to be where we are. There's a reason why animated films aren't doing all that well now, and that's because they're all pretty much the same at this point. And when you think about even the good ones, there's always something that's not quite right about them. Like even in The Incredibles, which was a really terrific animated film, but you still have the daughter sort of deciding to conform to everybody else, and now she gets the boy because she's conforming, and -- there's always some not-great messages in these animated films, because there's only so subversive they can be.

Gabriel: Right.

Jill: The problem is that in trying not to piss anybody off -- they're sort of like Democrats in that they try so hard not to piss anybody off that they end of pissing people off anyway.

Gabriel: I'm not sure that they do. I don't hear a huge outcry against Happy Feet.

Jill: Oh.....you just haven't been looking in the right places.

Gabriel: I'll say this: I don't know that the middle American family has it out for Happy Feet. I think it's got easy messages that in an afternoon's entertainment and diversion for the kids is perfectly fine. I just think that in history, when we look at Dumbo and Bambi and -- I'm going to say movies like Beauty and the Beast, and The Incredibles, where there's some more sophisticated and better-managed, for lack of a better word, morals, pitched to children, I think we can expect more than this kind of weird, jarring, and --

Jill: incoherent....

Gabriel: ...incoherent and confused message. I asked you earlier as sort of a leading question, and I think I would answer it myself by saying that I think they wanted to make a movie about dancing penguins, and wrote a movie around that idea, rather than saying, "We want to say this to kids, what would be a way to say that." So what have we missed.

Jill: The music? The use of songs?

Gabriel: Well, I think it's interesting not to have one original song, to use baby boomer songs from the 70's and 80's --

Jill: That I thought was a bit strange because the music played very "old" when you consider what the audience for this movie was going to be. Because for all of the in vitro babies, most parents of five-year-olds are not baby boomers. If you say that the baby boom ended around 1960, the youngest ones are 46 years old, and for the most part, these people don't have 3, 4, and 5-year-olds. So I thought the musical selections skewed just a shade old.

Gabriel: What did you think about the brevity of the music. there wasn't one song that played in its entirety. And some of the songs, maybe got two or three lines before going to something else.

Jill: Well, either there were music rights issues and they didn't want to pay, or more likely, it's a short attention span thing. It's songs for people who download music and listen to a little bit, and then hit the button on the iPOD for the next one.

Gabriel: That may be true. But it felt odd to me, that we never had those standard production numbers. And maybe...the culture's moving faster, we're not going to sit still for a big number anymore....

Jill: Maybe it was too expensive?

Gabriel: But you know -- I was thinking about the elephant seal scene, where have a big view of all those elephant seals. It's a 2-3 minute scene, with a LOT of animation. And maybe they could have spent that on something else. Well...so the music's a little troubling to me, and I hope that most cartoons that have musical scores continue to hire original composers for those, but at least this one had music. The Incredibles didn't have any music; Shrek only has music during the curtain calls.

Jill: But The Incredibles had Edna Mode, and God knows Edna Mode had very, very happy feet.

Gabriel: God Bless Edna Mode. Edna Mode, I'd take her happy feet any day.

Jill: So have we finished?

Gabriel: It's good to have done one of these.

Jill: It's been a year. Let's make it not a year next time.

Gabriel: Let's make it not a year next time. I'm looking forward to hearing what your readers have to say about the politics of children's movies in general and the politics of Happy Feet in particular. I think there's a lot to talk about.

Jill: Well, we'll give it to them as an assignment.

Gabriel: There you go.

Jill: OK. All right, folks, you know what your homework is.