So Many Books; So little Time

Happy Feet

I don’t usually review movies and I realize that this is a BOOK review blog but I don’t watch enough movies to warrent a blog to review them so this will just have to become my Entertainment Blog just like Hastings is an Entertainment Store even though that’s where I go to buy books.

Anyway, I was on the job today and teaching elementary music which usually means that I’m showing movies to the kids. Our principal is quite picky about what sort of movies are shown to the kids in that he wants nothing that isn’t rated G and even then he has some parents who don’t want their children watching movies. It is necessary for the kids to watch some educational videos over their time in school though.

But today I was just showing movies for the kids to have a day off. It was the last day before Thanksgiving break and the music teacher was gone so with me there, no actual music was going to happen. Had his wife been subbing for him, they would have been singing. And to break it up and because of the age range of the kids, I had several movies to show. Fifth graders were watching Tom Sawyer with an actor playing Tom who is at least my age if not older but was a small boy when the movie was made. Kindergarten and First Graders were watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving complete with a prayer over dinner. Second Graders were continuing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the original one.

But for Third and Fourth Grades I had a choice between Pete’s Dragon, Cars and Happy Feet. Now, I’ve seen Pete’s Dragon so many times I can recite along and it’s never been one of my favorite movies anyway so I nixed that one right away. Cars I have seen and I think it’s cute but I kind of wanted to see Happy Feet just to see what it was all about. And I’m sort of glad I did.

Now, since the classes are only 30 minutes long, it’s possible to watch the beginning of something so many times that you want to croak but as the kids indicated they had seen it before, I showed it straight through so I could see it. I had two third grade classes followed by two fourth grade classes so, for me, it was pretty much straight through.

I have to say that I was not impressed by this movie. In fact, I wouldn’t want my kids to watch this movie much less own it were they still small. There are just too many images that I question the motives of in this movie. And I don’t mean like Finding Nemo where the movie’s politics leaned so far to the left that it fell over. I’m talking about just disturbing images that should not be a part of a child’s thought processes.

For openers, the Emperor penguins sing to each other to attract a mate and I don’t know what real Emperors do but I don’t think they sway around and sing “You don’t have to be beaurtiful, I just want your body.” That to me was quite disturbing to show to young children. I also sub at the high school level and when parents and peers and teachers want to know where kids get these ideas I want to point them in the direction of movies like this one. Hello??? Kids hear this stuff and even though the parents of this young penguin stayed together which I’m betting real Emperors don’t, they weren’t attracted by intellegence or anything that humans should be attracted by (let’s face it, if they are going to have human personalities, kids are going to assume humans are suppose to act that way), they were merely attracted to produce an egg. Said so in the song, in fact. In my opinion those Emperors should either act like real Emperors or real people and not teenagers looking for the best sounding, best looking guy or gal. But that’s what the opening was.

Next, the mother, acting like a real penguin, goes off to fish while leaving the egg with the father. While she is gone the penguins band together and sing to the “Great ‘Guin” to turn the earth and bring back the sun in the spring. The Great ‘Guin shows up as a mystical penguin spirit that the males spend the winter singing praises to led by…….Noah, the spiritual leader of the penguins.

Noah comes into play later as the egg hatches and it becomes evident that the newborn penguin who is our “hero” Mumbles, cannot sing but tap dances instead. It is first determined that he must have private tutoring which he fails so he cannot be graduated so he’s not really a penguin. Then Noah questions the incubation of the egg and whether or not something went wrong. Well, the father dropped the egg but he won’t admit that until later when he is overcome with guilt and grief as Mumbles is blamed for the lack of fish and thus the starving of the penguins. Images of Israel worshipping false god and bringing punishment on the entire nation came to mind at this point.

So, Noah declares that Mumbles has adopted Pagan ways that he must renounce (his dancing) and learn to sing or be forever an outcast from Emperor Land. He has already been gone and found new friends in some rockhoppers with Latino accents who dance and collect pebbles and that just makes his Pagan ways more evident. Going along with that is his discovery of the “aliens” who have tagged a skua and left machinery and those plastic six pack holders and then he sees them netting fish. Mumbles claims (rightly) that he is not to blame but the “aliens” are.

Noah comes over as a relgious nut ready to burn Mumbles at the stake at this point as he declares Mumbles to be a heretic and in need of renouncing his pagan ways and so Mumbles goes off on his own to prove that he isn’t nuts. He ends up washed up on shore, put in a zoo where he tries to talk to humans, then insane until a little girl taps in rhythm on the glass of his enclosure. He then wins his “freedom” with a tracking beacon to lead the “aliens” (humans) to the colony of Emperors where he “converts” everyone to tap dancing and throught the magic of television, convinces all humans to abandon fishing around the continent of Antarctica.

Gag! I mean they have humans saying things like “what does it mean?” and “there was only one, now they’re all doing it” to “I don’t want to live in a world without penguins” and “do you think they want us to stop fishing?”

The entire scenario is nothing but liberal, anti-God garbage. I don’t particularly like fish and I do like penguins but PLEASE! And the whole “Great ‘Guin” thing was just flat out wrong especially when Noah calls Mumbles pagan. This isn’t even thinly veiled. This is an attack on God along with the regular Green Earth liberal garbage. I can take the liberal garbage but when you attack my God especially in a movie that promotes finding a mate just because you need their body and is geared toward young children, you have crossed the line.

Pass the word–Happy Feet promotes things that should not be offerered to the viewing of young minds.

And the next time I have a choice like that, we’ll watch Cars or Pete’s Dragon. They promote some real basic values. Happy Feet does not.