The great thing about all this rain is that there is a good excuse for having a home cinema afternoon. We stick on the DVD, make popcorn and life is good.
This month we got the chance to review Happy Feet 2. We hadn't seen Happy Feet 1, but I knew it had won an Oscar so I figured the sequel had to be worth a watch. There's penguins, there's dancing, there's music. What's not to like? We invited a whole load of kids round and made a HUGE bucket of popcorn.
The animation is amazing; the underwater shots are breathtaking and every single flake of snow is crystal, crystal clear. They've got the big names doing the voices too - from Robin Williams to Pink, Brad Pitt to Matt Damon, they are all there. The dance numbers are fab; Under Pressure sung by Pink makes a great finale, my favourite scene of the film by a mile.
So much so good, but... but... I can't say that we give this film a big thumbs up. At just under 1hr 40mins I found this film dragging along. The story was a long one and didn't seem to move smoothly, to me it seemed disjointed. Although there are some lovely characters (Will and Bill the Krill, separated from the swarm and their ongoing philosophical crises being the best) there are a whole bunch of characters that just didn't work and they disrupted the flow of the story.
There are big environmental themes to be drawn out of the film that made for some interesting discussions - particularly global warming and the impact it has upon other animals.
But did the kids (aged between 4 and 8) like it? They, like me, found it to be quite long and few stayed the course. A few found the film quite scary in parts, particularly the scenes where the ice breaks and the penguins are chased by various predators. Others just drifted off in the last 30 minutes.
Overall then - probably a 3 star out of 5 movie. Worth a watch especially for the quality of the animation, but you won't be glued to the screen.
Disclosure: as a Tots 100 Film Club Reviewer we receive a DVD to keep in order to complete this review. The views are all my own.