Happy Feet Two

[BuffaloWilder]

No thread? Boooo.


I'm gonna be honest - speaking as the guy who kinda sorta kick-started the trend of writing about the first movie in a critical sense, I'll say this: while there are problems, there is far more good to Happy Feet Two than most reviewers are mentioning.

My only real problem with it is the weird excess of poo jokes - I'm not a pretentious guy. I enjoys me a good fart joke now and again. But, there are two of them here, and they're both really strange by themselves and oddly placed within the movie. The first one is just uncomfortable to watch. Really, really uncomfortable. The second one actually undercuts a really epic and dramatic moment that I was getting into, the Elder character's only really big scene, when - PLOP - he gets bird poo on his face. And, then it's gone and never mentioned again, like they didn't realize it kind of takes the air out of the rest of the sequence.

I really loved the entire arc with the elephant seal, though - especially how surprisingly dark the confrontation between him and Mumble is, near the end. And, all throughout, its like Miller's made a constant choice to keep the film feeling breathless like the second half of the first movie. Yes, there's a focus on the father and son relationship between Mumble and his kid - but, it's not really what most reviewers seem to think, about this kid finding his place. It starts out that way, but it takes a few surprising turns, and it slowly becomes more about Mumble's pragmatism and his son's misplaced idealism coming to a head. And, when it does, over the stormy colony at night, it's one of the best scenes of the film.

I also think I know what most people's problems are with the film's structure - it's not herky-jerky. It's actually pretty tightly woven and interlocking. But, more than the last film, Miller allows the natural progression of the environment dictate the flow of his story - humans appear to help the colony get free at one point, but have to stop because of an approaching storm. The skuas attack because of the vulnerability of the colony, because - well, yeah. That would happen. And, the sequence where all of this goes down is just breath-taking in its construction - from its tense, silent beginning to its bombastic conclusion. Miller can still stage a scene like this better than anyone working, currently.

Sven's also a pretty interesting character, and Miller makes his religious allegories even more obvious - the film makes no bones about his false spiritual impact on the penguins, and when the curtain falls away and his story's revealed, he gets a really intriguing fall from grace. Conjointly though, I would've liked a little more of the cultural world-building Miller brought to the first one, and more than just a passing mention of the Emperor Penguin's entire religion and mythology, and how the iceberg stuff comingles and interweaves with that. But, not too big a thing. It's a big part of the first movie, and it's made reference to here, so it still exists in the background at least.

I'll have a pretty full review up sometime soon at the blog, but - I liked this a lot. It gets my stamp, and it's my prediction that the T-meter will gradually rise and this will get reappraised pretty quick.

Also, the krill are pretty awesome. I love that entire subplot, how it unintentionally affects the rest of the film, and it's conclusion as part of the end of the rest of the film. Also that they're obviously gay. Very, very gay.

[Bosco B Thug]

Deepest, deepest thanks for liking it. Was bummed about the Rotten score on RT, but by gum I'm gonna go see this in theaters.

[BuffaloWilder]

Hey, no problem. It was my pleasure :P

This is definitely a film made for the theaters, though - in particular because there's a scene at the end of the movie involving every single species from penguins to seals to krill that's just so visually astounding that it left me a little slack-jawed.

I also liked how the humans in this went from this mostly unknown, unseen and hovering kind of Other from the first film into a more obviously benevolent and active presence in the story. The handful of scenes with live actors are also really interestingly done visually - one of them is a protracted flashback in black and white with sudden dashes of vibrant color, here and there. Think what Rodriguez did with Sin City, except - y'know, a little better and not comic-booky.

[BuffaloWilder]

I also learned that apparently you get much better hours and a lot more pay at an AMC theater than you do at the kind of art-house theater I work at.

That sucks.

[Spinal]

If not exactly the revelation that the first film was, this is still an excellent film in its own right. It's got plenty of humor, some spectacular visual sequences and emotional moments that hit palpably. The plot is unusual in that it is not really the typical hero's journey that one might expect. It is instead a film that observes a community in crisis. The penguins exist in a harsh environment that is made worse by a subtle shift in climate that makes it impossible for everyone to receive the food they need. The film has no true villain, merely a web of interconnected citizens whose character we judge based on their responses to a tough situation. There is Ramon the romantic, Sven the charismatic outsider, Bryan the stubborn, Mumble the paternal protector and also Will the philosopher. Though the film's environmental concerns and big-hearted musical numbers might have a touch of the familiar this time through, the sequel just might surpass its predecessor in one respect: the way in which the film's ensemble structure underlines its own theme of unity.

***1/2

[Spinal]

It should also be said that this film misses Brittany Murphy a lot. Her replacement, P!nk, is adequate musically, but Murphy was a superior voice-over artist.

[Henry Gale]

In an interview with Miller he mentioned that he'd never heard "Under Pressure" before working on the movie, and that it's only in there because Hank Azaria suggested it. Maybe the most confusing thing I read that day.

Also, this looks like it's going to massively underperform. Where the first movie opened with about $42 million and went onto make $200 million five years ago, Happy Feet Two is probably going to only make around $23 million this weekend (and that's with 3D tickets in there). I can't imagine it's going to do much better next weekend against The Muppets, Arthur Christmas and Hugo, three more big-budget Thanksgiving openings aimed at kids.

I still want to see it because of my love for the first one, but even with some more encouraging words from those I tend to trust outside of the consensus, I don't have much of an urge to see it. I'll probably just end up watching once it hits home video (which is still the easiest thing for me to call it rather than "DVD/Blu-ray/VOD/Netflix release timeframe").

[BuffaloWilder]

Most of the reviews for this are curious, because a lot of them a) don't really understand the film on a basic narrative level or how it all connects and b) spend a lot of time in the article giving themselves over to weightless, snarky attempts at humor.

I don't quite understand this new direction for internet film writers or why they think it's amiable, and it's one of the reasons I've never been a huge fan of Rotten Tomatoes in the first place because - well, these guys get counted.

On the plus side, though - almost all of these admit its attempts at scope, and stuff like that.

[[ETM]]

It's curious that I, a fan of the first film, hadn't heard of the sequel up until it literally hit theatres. I don't know if the advertising for it was adequate.

[Spinal]

a) don't really understand the film on a basic narrative level or how it all connects



Bingo.

[BuffaloWilder]

;385367']It's curious that I, a fan of the first film, hadn't heard of the sequel up until it literally hit theatres. I don't know if the advertising for it was adequate.

Yeah, it seemed pretty under-advertised. Plus, there was only one trailer that was actually good, and showed off a bunch of the more dramatic, epic stuff from the movie. And they released it three days before the movie hit theaters as a Yahoo Exclusive.

[Bosco B Thug]

Really, what the f*ck, this was magnificent.

Spot on, guys.

[BuffaloWilder]

I love this quote by Miller that he gave in an interview about the film, earlier in the week. For me, it describes these two films perfectly, and reminds me a lot of Jodorowsky's famous "I make movies with my cajones" quote:


Stories have to be experienced at every possible level of the human being,'' Miller says. ''You have to experience a story emotionally, intellectually, viscerally. It affects the groin, the heart, the brain, the spirit. It affects an audience anthropologically."

''Some people look at the film and just might enjoy the dancing or some of the songs. It's very spectacular in 3D, so you might just enjoy being in Antarctica and seeing the spectacle … The thing I most want is that people get an immersive and hopefully meaningful experience from being in the cinema."

[Spinal]

I just really enjoy being in that world. It's really a bizarre convention, all these penguins who communicate big emotions like a Jungian jukebox. But somehow it works. I was 'dancing' in my seat for much of the movie and easily could have got up on my feet if I wasn't surrounded by strangers. And I really enjoy how it places an emphasis on character, integrity and morality without being heavy-handed about it.

[Watashi]

Yeah, this was great.

Like the first film, the only major weakness is the inclusion of live action humans. Not only does it look weird, but here they just kind of come and go. They could have cut them out and the film would not have lost a beat.

But everything with the penguins (and krill) were awesome. Miller even snuck in some pro-gay marriage in there along with all the environmental stuff.

Critics are weird.

[BuffaloWilder]

This is kind of off-topic, but - I mean, I was looking through a bunch of the sites that are counted on the Tomato-Meter for various movies earlier today and my god, have you guys seen some of these things? A lot of them are obviously personally created websites, but they look like they were created with Angelfire. By a blind man. With no hands.

I say again, this is why Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are both useless tools for determining a film's critical heft. Why are these people counted?


Why aren't I counted, goddammit :sad:

[eternity]

This is kind of off-topic, but - I mean, I was looking through a bunch of the sites that are counted on the Tomato-Meter for various movies earlier today and my god, have you guys seen some of these things? A lot of them are obviously personally created websites, but they look like they were created with Angelfire. By a blind man. With no hands.

I say again, this is why Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are both useless tools for determining a film's critical heft. Why are these people counted?


Why aren't I counted, goddammit :sad:
Despite their lack of internet savvy, they are somehow capable of getting into major critics' societies, allowing them to get on the Tomatometer.

[Russ]

I haven't seen either of these Happy Feet films yet. Based on the feedback from other posters, I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy them. But I don't know which I would enjoy more: the films themselves, or Buffalo's unbridled passion for them (and I mean that as a compliment).

[BuffaloWilder]

I haven't seen either of these Happy Feet films yet. Based on the feedback from other posters, I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy them. But I don't know which I would enjoy more: the films themselves, or Buffalo's unbridled passion for them (and I mean that as a compliment).

Thanks for that, man.

:pritch:

It's a pretty small pantheon of films that I find I can just sit down and discuss or write about whenever I get the chance, and for whatever reason, these two films are a big part of that. This list also includes Soderbergh's Che, and Refn's Drive among the more recent additions, for anyone interested.

[BuffaloWilder]

Ha ha ha.

So, a while ago Glenn Heath - whose a guy I've wrote with numerous times, and who's ended up writing for Slant - and I had a discussion about this movie in the comments section of Jaime Christley's review for the site. And, we both agreed that it was a lot better than the reviews had been saying, and that Christley's own review was pretty badly written because it was basically "I hated it when the penguins sang the pop songs. What's our culture coming to?"

So, he bad-mouthed us on his Twitter, said we ganged up on him, and called us names.

He's a stand-up guy.

[Rowland]

This Jaime N. Christley should change his name to Jaime C. Christley. For CONTROVERSY.

[Spinal]

Armond discussion moved to Armond thread.

[Sven]

The skuas attack because of the vulnerability of the colony, because - well, yeah. That would happen. And, the sequence where all of this goes down is just breath-taking in its construction - from its tense, silent beginning to its bombastic conclusion.

Wait, but I thought you said:


The second one actually undercuts a really epic and dramatic moment that I was getting into, the Elder character's only really big scene, when - PLOP - he gets bird poo on his face. And, then it's gone and never mentioned again, like they didn't realize it kind of takes the air out of the rest of the sequence.

So is the sequence breathtaking in its entirety or does the bird poo joke take the air out of it?

Fantastic film. I might prefer it to the original. The complaint of the absent cosmic/myth material overlooks the series progression from individual spiritualism (where God - or the Great 'Guin - matters most) to communal pragmatism (significantly layered... I'm not sure there's a more awe-inspiring moment in the first one than the moment where Bill and Will escape the swarm and gaze on the nebulous, pulsing cloud of pink from which they emerged, the weaving black hole of a whale actualizing evolutionary context that echoes through the penguins' newly found global awareness). The main story almost feels ancillary to the krill arc, it being key to the film's vision of scaled life systems.


Like the first film, the only major weakness is the inclusion of live action humans. Not only does it look weird, but here they just kind of come and go. They could have cut them out and the film would not have lost a beat.

It may not have lost a beat without them, but the humans certainly contribute to the polyrhythmic structure of the film. Not only do they add to the environmental commentary through their eventual abandoning, but they also provide a thematic foil as outlined above: this movie captures life as a chainlink, in which all parts hold everything together. Leaving them out would relegate the human role to a ghostlike negative force of climate change and oil spills, which would be too simplistic and heavy-handed.

I love that one of the penguins is a yodeling free-runner. Haters gonna hate.

[Bosco B Thug]

I didn't have a problem with the bird poo bit at all. It's not really a gag moment... it's just something the skuas do to the Elder, who the film wants to undermine at that moment anyway.


Fantastic film. I might prefer it to the original. Yay, and I may agree with you. I'm into vignette/anti-narratives, and I definitely left the theater thinking they were definitely at least equals.

[KK2.0]

;385367']It's curious that I, a fan of the first film, hadn't heard of the sequel up until it literally hit theatres. I don't know if the advertising for it was adequate.

+1, unfortunately i've found this thread too late as well because i've missed it at theaters.

[lovejuice]

Jubilant. I might even prefer it to the original. I am surprised many critics miss out how expansive this film is. This is not a journey of a hero, but an ecological musical fantasy setting in the south pole.

If enough people watch this, it may really be another Match-cut's Speed Racer.

[Wryan]

Much as I love Hank Azaria, Sven is a nonstarter. I think he brings down almost every scene he's in. Other than that, this is a great companion to the first. I thought the climax here soared and lifted my heart more than anything in the first movie, but I think the first is a bit better overall. Also, this is such a beautiful-looking film. I wish my skies were this blue. And I had no idea Matt Damon had such a good singing voice, brief as we hear it here.