Why I didn't like Happy Feet...

For those of you who saw the movie and hated it, saw the movie and loved it but didn't know why others reacted to it so violently, or just plain have nothing better to do for the next three minutes of your life and counting, here's my Happy Feet review revisited...

Tap, tap, tap, tap… You may have heard that heavenly, almost hypnotizing sound in movies like Swing Time or Taps, but Fred Astaire and Gregory Hines have been pushing up daisies now for years. So have a lot of penguins, apparently, due to over-fishing. What’s the difference between Fred Astaire, you ask, and a tapping, cartoon penguin? Well, aside from years of practice to hone a skill to seeming effortlessness and the small fact that Astaire was a real person? Nothing. Nothing at all.

2006’s Happy Feet does many things on many levels. It entertains, thrills and tugs at the heart strings of people of all ages who can’t resist that tapping cadence. A classic case of false advertising, Happy Feet’s trailer never foretold of the dark message of over-fishing that’s been stretched to encompass the larger industrial world – oil rigging, whaling and canning alike. Hitting audiences over the head with its message may, in turn, act as a deterrent to a more subtle factor – the film’s aggressive marketing to children who don’t possess the ability to discern the full extent of the problem of over-fishing any more than they could relate who really invented tap dancing.

The accents relay mixed messages it may take some young movie-goers years to disentangle. All of the dominant penguins possess American accents, while the elder Emperors retain British accents. Mexican-accented penguins comprise a smaller group that’s not taken seriously and evil penguin-eaters sound an awful lot like New Yorkers and Ruskies. All of these penguins live in the same country – Antarctica.

Apart from confusing still-developing audiences, the movie scares in places by attaching human emotions and conditions to animals without providing understanding of what it is the penguins of Antarctica really need. What did the filmmakers really wish to say with this film? That we could all just get along, if only we could learn to love tap? That seems to foot the bill. Not since Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest has the U.S. witnessed propaganda on this scale in this medium; but, at least that was done smartly.

Happy Feet would’ve made me much happier if it hadn’t been so insulting.

Volver (2006)

Going to see a Pedro Amoldovar film is a lot like taking a ride on a metal roller-coaster. Unlike the primitive wooden ones, you can relax knowing that you're not going to get jerked around a lot while watching the rush of pretty colors and participating in the squeals of delight. Right from the get-go, the characters are in the middle of their lives and you get to watch them sizzle and spark and diffuse the screen with everyday moments that could easily have been you only an hour ago. One of the best treats of the Spanish director's peculiar gift -- specifically, his restraint in ladling out huge dollops of back story to queue us up to the present -- places the story in the heart, asking only for your rapt attention. He does this so well that I imagine the only better way to watch one of his films would be as a native speaker of the language.

Familiarty with Spanish customs seems an almost negligible dimension, though, so it sounds just as plausible that, other than the slight inconvenience of non-speakers having to read subtitles, his films are seamless and character-based enough that the audience loses very little by virtue of that. And that, to me, is what really makes Almodovar stand out among his peers and predecessors. Not many non-English speaking directors -- nor, even non-Hollywood, for that matter -- can claim the kind of fanatic love and loyalty while also reaping the benefits of a very wide audience. Indie directors would be accused of mainstreamism and many foreign film directors would be accused of a cultural watering-down of their vision.

But Amoldovar is Amoldovar, world without end, Amen. Or so it seems...

Anybody disagree or have an insight? I'd like to do something different this time, and open this up to discussion before proceeding with the usual straight-forward review.

Audience/Screen Relationship ...is life.

So there's been some talk about the role of the viewer in the filmic experience -- not just the actual watching of the film itself (i.e., just showing up), but the bio-rhythms that each individual brings to the screen, the state of mind accompanying and interplaying with and against those bio-rhythms and the importance of these factors in the filmmaking process in general. Mostly, this sort of discussion has been just hinted at and kicked around, and a couple of oscillating examples can be found over at Tucker Teague's (a.k.a cineboy and at an early blogathan post by Marina. I feel like writing something on all of this, but haven't made any concrete decision yet what exactly that is...

I will have something soon, though. I'm not indecisive, not one bit -- and if I ever made you think otherwise, then I might just be rather cunning after all...;)