watch Happy Feet 2
Mumble’s son, Erik, is struggling to realize his talents in the Emperor Penguin world. Meanwhile, Mumble and his family and friends discover a new threat their home — one that will take everyone working together to save them.
watch Happy Feet 2. Happy Feet Two outright sets out to be the anti-Happy Feet. Where the first film told a simple story in an ambitious way, the sequel breaks several complicated themes down into simple setpieces. Where the first film followed familiar tropes, the second one sets out to undermine them. Where Happy Feet touted the importance of confident individualism, Happy Feet Two laughs that attitude off at every turn in favor of messages about the value of community.
As you watch Happy Feet Two, Antarctica’s emperor-penguin population has happily incorporated massive dance numbers into what used to be a song-only world. Happy Feet protagonist Mumble (Elijah Wood) and his love interest Gloria (Pink, taking over for Brittany Murphy) have a chick of their own, Erik (Ava Acres), but he’s hesitant about dancing, to Mumble’s dismay. From there, the plot hiccups through a number of segments, touching on Erik’s infatuation with the what he thinks is a flying penguin (Hank Azaria), but eventually focusing on a crisis that might wipe out the emperor penguins. Meanwhile, a krill named Will (Brad Pitt) breaks off from his vast swarm and decides to remake himself as a vicious predator, while his anxious friend Bill (Matt Damon) tries to talk him down.
Returning director George Miller doesn’t handle the big picture here as well as he did with Happy Feet; the episodic segments seem lumpy, overstretched, and disconnected in the first half, and the focus on body functions, bad puns, and Robin Williams’ half-baked ethnic accents curdles the humor. But the film handles the smaller scale superbly, particularly in little visual details, like the shifting reflection of a krill walking on snow. More significantly, the film shows rather than tells. Mumble never overtly explains his fears of parental inadequacy, and never gets a big validating dad moment, but his awkward vacillation between nurturing Erik and giving him space is clear, as is his gradual growth into his role. Oil slicks and global warming play roles in the plot, but no environmental message is explicitly mentioned. The film never lays out its pro-community sentiments in a speech, it just shows over and over how there’s strength in numbers and cooperation, and even lets the adults find the solutions, instead of having Erik save the day.
Happy Feet 2 is smart enough to set up atypically nuanced, supportive relationships between Erik and his baby-penguin friends, and dumb enough to regularly lean on repetitive broad physical comedy. watch new movies
