Babble Reviews Film

John Constantine

Peter Jackson did a horrible thing when he made his Lord of the Rings movies. Thanks to his ten-plus hour trilogy of blockbusters, every studio on the face of the planet has decided that they need to make noisy epics out of as many fantasy properties as they can buy. Stardust, a quiet British fairy tale graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, is the latest story to fall victim to booming scores and panoramic CG landscapes. The original was simply about a young boy who walked into a fairy world where he found his true love and grew into an adult — and the movie is all that, plus transvestite sky pirates, magic battles with witches and Rocky Gervais cameos. It's a crying shame. Underneath the gaudy effects and needless action is a very pleasant love story about how big the world is, even when it seems small. — John Constantine

March of the Penguins, Madagascar, Happy Feet — thus far, the '00s have been the decade of the penguin. Breaking away from this trend, Arctic Tale follows a baby polar bear (Nanu) and a baby walrus (Seela) over several years of their growth, as global warming looms imperiously over their fragile Arctic existence. In contrast to the shimmering optimism of its predecessors, this documentary does not shy away from the dire consequences of human interference with the environment. While kids will coo at the montages of cuddly polar bears and laugh at narrator Queen Latifah ’s sass (to say nothing of the 70's disco soundtrack, including a well-timed nod to "We Are Family"), they’ll be just as affected by the deaths in the film when climate change tampers with the animals' habitat. (One toddler in my screening had to be escorted out of the theater after she expressed some righteous indignation.) While the well-crafted narration and cinematography of this no-holds-barred documentary will certainly court critical acclaim for director Sarah Robertson, its lack of sugar-coating may not be palatable for particularly impressionable small fry. However, if your kids can stomach sad as well as cute, Arctic Tale will impart some environmental lessons that those penguin movies did not. — Jessica Haralson

Like that other musical tribute to hairstyling products, Grease, Hairspray is an energetic homage to a decade that never was — in this case, a candy-coated version of the sixties, where segregation is basically just a big misunderstanding. Radiant newcomer Nikki Blonsky plays Tracy Turnblad, a chubby teenager who throws local politics into chaos when she lands a spot on Baltimore's most popular dance show. Director Adam Shankman has crafted some fine scenes from the infectious Broadway score; although there are plenty of visual gags, he eschews broad parody and MTV-style montages in favor of good old-fashioned storytelling. His approach gives the actors something to sink their teeth into, and it's a delight to watch a villainous Michelle Pfeiffer and a bashful Christopher Walken devour their roles. Sadly, the same can't be said for John Travolta, whose Edna Turnblad is like the love child of Doctor Evil and Miss Piggy. But what's most absent from Hairspray is the endearing grotesquerie of John Waters' original film. This is a sanitized, telegenic Baltimore, a far cry from the one Waters has devoted his career to celebrating. And yet, like the original, Hairspray is a feel-good film where all the rejected people come out on top. And that's something worth singing about. —Gwynne Watkins

Book Five is the one in which almost no one believes Harry that Voldemort has returned, and in which the Ministry of Magic, led by paranoid dictator Cornelius Fudge, infiltrates Hogwart's and its sadistic, tea-drinking emissary, Dolores Umbridge, takes over the school. It's "the angry book," or, as my thirteen-year-old stepson and Potter fan, Blake, puts it, "the boring one."

The new film has an awful lot of Voldemort in the flesh (Ralph Fiennes). I preferred having him more shadowy; to me, the well-lighted Voldemort looks like he's just had tons of plastic surgery. But Blake thought it was a "good look for a snake-like villain." We agreed the high-level-wizard battles were pretty incredible. And how about that (really quite long) kiss between Harry and Cho? [Nervous laughter.] "It was okay."

The director, David Yates (who's also been tapped to do the sixth film), doesn't have Alfonso Cuaron's magical touch; the emotional scenes here feel forced, more X-Men than Harry Potter. But it's still awfully good, and the details are frequently funny (especially Umbridge's wall of mewling cat plates). Blake rates it up there with films three and four, and says that unlike those two, which had the best material to work with, "This one's a lot better than the book." — Ada Calhoun & Blake Medlin (age thirteen)

Against all odds, Transformers isn't about giant robots and stuff blowing up. About forty minutes of the film contain both robots and explosions, and they're some of the most impressive and exciting special effects that have ever graced a screen. The other hundred-plus minutes aren't really about anything at all. Transformers introduces roughly fifteen separate characters in the first half hour: a squad of good ol' fashioned U.S. soldiers trying to get back to their families, defense secretary Jon Voight and his staff, mischievous teenager Shia LaBeouf and his would-be grease monkey girlfriend, all of their friends, Bernie Mac, and some hackers thrown on top because, y'know, technology and stuff should have hackers. Megatron, the big bad villain, isn't even introduced until well into the third act. So, yes, you and your kids will love the giant robots — you'll just be bored as hell until they show up. — John Constantine

I was less moved by the CGI food porn in Ratatouille than by the realistic rattiness of the rodent stars, whom I recognized from the back alleys of the many restaurants where I've dined and worked. An early scene of the colony fleeing en masse achieves a creepily thrilling, Willard-meets-the-Russian-Revolution grandeur — but this being a children's film, our petulant hero, Remy, spends a wearying amount of time strutting around on his hind legs before learning valuable lessons about friendship and family. Pixar is too virtuoso an outfit to season this stew with fart jokes and put-down humor, but I questioned why Remy was given an American accent (a particularly confusing choice given assistant chef Janeane Garofalo's French-ish burr). Nonetheless, the scenes between Remy and the credulous Linguini — a human pal who can't speak rat — are a delight, as the one-sided dialogue brings out the Buster Keaton in everyone involved.

As far as the target audience is concerned, several crucial plot points regarding illegitimacy and inheritance law might as well have been in French, though a remarkably concise description of each worker's responsibilities in a three-star restaurant has inspired my daughter Inky to seek employment in fine dining, despite a total revulsion for any cuisine plus haute que le mac-et-fromage. Milo, too, loved it, even if inexperience now causes him to claim it's "so dumb" because it's about a "rat who cooks." — Ayun Halliday

If, deluge imminent, God told us to load His ark with two copies of every palatable comedy of 2007, Evan Almighty would soon find itself learning to swim. It's not a good sign when, while watching the most expensive comedy of all time — two hundred million dollars, by some estimates — you spend less time laughing than wondering where the money went. Not that Steve Carell isn't sufficiently funny as Evan Baxter, a former weatherman and newly elected Congressman who reluctantly accepts the role of a modern Noah. Wanda Sykes is hilarious, even. But the script drowns in watery sentimentality and pseudo-religious pap. After An Inconvenient Truth, any film with a conservation message as vague and generic as Evan Almighty's is going to seem antediluvian. Plus, if we have to watch Morgan Freeman take yet another cloying turn as a white man's conscience, we'll be begging the wrathful Old Testament god to pay Hollywood a visit. — Justin Clark

To its credit, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer doesn't try to be a weighty morality play or an epic saga. Movie starts, Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman are getting married, this naked silver guy starts doing crazy things, Dr. Doom shows up, everybody fights, the naked silver guy becomes good, exeunt. Yes, it's that easy and, a lot of the time, it's a hoot. The majority of the onscreen action takes the form of elaborate chase sequences, allowing our heroes to speed through Siberia in one shot and blow up the Great Wall in the next. The only distractions from the special effects are the surprisingly effective performances of Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis, tempered by all the groan-inducing attempts at humor. All told, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is a pretty good time. Of all the loud spectacles you can drop eleven dollars on this summer, it may be the most satisfying choice. ? John Constantine

I hope my daughter Inky's uninhibited and maniacal guffawing didn't ruin the experience for the other children watching Surf's Up — though judging from their comparatively tepid response and some overheard inquiries as to her mental capacity, it may have. I wondered if her wild enjoyment had something to do with the fact that her father's a surfer, though his mild, mid-Atlantic waves would surely render him the laughing stock of every penguin dude ripping the film's towering, turquoise swells. Their blatant disregard of geography aside, the screenwriters have done their homework, or at least mined some well-known documentaries to good effect. Any character not stepping into liquid can expect to spend some screen time sliding on his belly or warming an egg between his toes. Points, too, for casting the Big Liebowski as Big Z, a mellow recluse who, my son Milo announced to our fellow patrons, "is a much better surfer than Daddy, I can tell!" His do-it-because-you-love-it philosophy goes down much easier than Pen Gu Island's uninspiring, unrealistic and, I might add, totally bogus lack of female competitive surfers. Perhaps an all-girl sequel is already in the works. — Ayun Halliday

"Isn't it weird that when you have a kid, all of your hopes and dreams go out the window?" Spoken by Paul Rudd's weary father-of-two character, it's not exactly the revelation you expect in a comedy about pregnancy; nor do you expect to see a full-on crowning shot when the baby finally emerges. But Knocked Up is a film about the unexpected, and it admirably refuses to ply the audience with comfortable clichés. Judd Apatow's follow-up to the lovable 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up chronicles an accidental pregnancy from conception (during a drunken one-night stand) to birth. The film is, surprisingly, much darker than its predecessor. It's also longer; by the time Katherine Heigl goes into labor, it's easy to sympathize with her exhaustion. On the other hand, Knocked Up is very funny, loaded with bullseye observations (What to Expect When You're Expecting is "basically a big list of things you can't do," says a baffled Seth Rogan) and cringe-inducing gags that never feel contrived. This may be the first cinematic pregnancy in which the expectant parents act like grown-ups: screwed-up, endearing, complicated grown-ups who say foolish things like "I don't want this baby to determine the rest of our lives." After so many TV shows and movies that treat pregnancy as an idyllic happily-ever-after, Knocked Up is a bumpy ride worth taking. — Gwynne Watkins

I liked the first and second Shrek films, but sadly, I find myself not as keen on Shrek the Third. The jokes aren't aimed at the parental chaperones this time around; the laughs mainly come from slapstick (though I agreed with the five-year-olds in attendance that Shrek's dream sequence with thousands of demanding mini-ogres was pretty funny). Grown-ups are meant, instead, to be relating to the film's plot: Shrek is growing older, and he's faced with new responsibilities, both in terms of parenting and Far Far Away governance. Shrek's not sure if he wants the mantle of authority — or a child, for that matter (too late, since Fiona's knocked up) — and so he decides to seek out the alternate candidate for the position of ruler, a young boy named Arthur. Between the Arthur plot and an elaborate Prince Charming coup-scheme, Donkey is unfortunately relegated to a much smaller role, and Puss in Boots relies on the same old catty tricks of yore. Your five-to-twelve-year olds will love it, but the parenting-responsibility theme just stressed me out. — Jordana Horn

Everybody loves Spider-Man. Not just Sam Raimi's hugely successful film franchise, but the lovable, guilt-ridden pile of wise-cracking psychoses that is Peter Parker. Adults can relate to the emotional turmoil Spidey faces in the aftermath of familial tragedy, and to his problems balancing his professional life with interpersonal relationships. Kids love him because he has the power to defeat his enemies, and because he wears a mask, so they can see themselves inside the costume. While the last two Spider-Man films gracefully provided all of this, Spider-Man 3 unfortunately fails to deliver the goods. This time, Spider-Man faces three separate villains and thus three disparate story threads. Spidey's conflicts with the Green Goblin, the Sandman, and the anti-Spider-Man, Venom, are held together by a flimsy redemption premise. It groans under the weight of multiple movies stuffed into a single, two-and-a-half-hour special effects extravaganza. It's sporadically thrilling (the superheroic effects are truly impressive), but ultimately exhausting (most of the kids in my screening got up for a walk around the ninety-minute mark). The climactic battle between Spider-Man and the film's antagonists looks and feels like a six-year-old's action figure drama. Except the six year-old's battle probably has a more logical set-up. — John Constantine

Any given five minutes of Disney's time-travel adventure Meet the Robinsons is a lot of fun. There's a swing band composed of martini-swilling frogs, a bowler hat that aspires to world domination and a future city where giant soap bubbles constitute mass transit — all of which would be delightful, if the film supported them with any kind of coherent story. Instead, we get a meandering yarn about an orphaned child prodigy who can't get anyone to adopt him, so he invents a machine that will show him the identity of his birth mother, but before he can get it to work, he's visited by a mysterious kid who whisks him off to the future where he meets an eccentric family that implores him to fix the machine or else he'll destroy the timeline and — I'll pause for a breath here, but the film takes no such luxuries. To compound the chaos, the entire movie is shown in 3D. It's very advanced 3D — the opening rainstorm that pours onto the audience is actually quite beautiful — but it results in dozens of labored site gags in which various objects, body parts and food items (like peanut butter and jelly, twice) are hurled at the viewer. The movie plays like a rambling joke told by a preschooler who doesn't yet grasp the concept of punch lines. Of course, if you happen to know such a preschooler, she'll probably love it. — Gwynne Watkins

I walked into TMNT wondering: is this new Ninja Turtles film meant for the Yu-Gi-Oh set, or will it be a straight-up action fest geared toward thirty-year-old nostalgia hounds? Turns out the movie is just as confused as I was. Opening with some awkward narration (courtesy of Laurence Fishburne), we get the short version of the Turtles' backstory. Then we're told about a nameless ancient warlord who opened an inter-dimensional portal three thousand years ago, unleashing thirteen monsters on Earth, turning his most trusted generals to stone, and making himself immortal. Right. This initial disconnect is jarring to say the least, and it ultimately colors the entire movie. It almost seems like writer/director Kevin Munroe had a screenplay for a CGI movie about ancient Mayan warriors that never got off the ground until the Ninja Turtles license landed in his lap.

When the story and animation focus solely on the Turtles, TMNT is entertaining and very pleasing to the eye. It manages to tap into the endearing quality that keeps the first live-action film, now almost two decades old, fresh beyond nostalgia — at its heart, it's a disarmingly earnest story about absurd characters. But everything else is lamentably clumsy, particularly the exaggerated design of the human characters. Something is hugely off when the most realistically proportioned characters in your movie are the anthropomorphic turtles. — John Constantine

Despite all the glowing orbs and grandiose statements in the trailer, The Last Mimzy is essentially the tale of a stuffed animal gone awry. Noah and Emma, two affluent Seattle suburban kids, find a box full of strange devices in the waves at their (enviable) beach house. They adopt the box's contents, which include a stuffed rabbit named Mimzy who talks in whale-like warbles, as fun new toys. After playing with these toys, however, Noah can suddenly draw Tibetan mandalas, perform telekinesis and chart arachnid sound emissions, while Emma learns the arts of levitation and telepathy. If you're thinking this doesn't really make sense, you're right. It makes even less sense once we learn that this is a care package from the future — a future that will never come to be, mind you, unless Emma and Noah take action. Then throw in the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Overall, the movie is convoluted, and seems to rely too heavily on the "if something is cool, don't tell your parents about it" line of reasoning that always brings in the SWAT team (see E.T. as paradigmatic example). But if there actually were movie-tie-in merchandise that exponentially improved your kid's brain functioning, The Last Mimzy would make a killing. — Jordana Horn

True to the book on which it's based, Disney's Bridge to Terebithia is a lovely, poignant and unabashedly sad film. It tells the story of a friendship between two rural kids: Jess (Josh Hutcherson), a shy, artistic boy from a large, poor family, and Leslie (Annasophia Robb), a recent blue-state transplant who's the daughter of two novelists. Both are oddballs at their middle school and somewhat neglected by their parents, so they escape into Terebithia, an imaginary world of their own creation. Director Gabor Csupo is faithful to Katherine Patterson's sap-free novel, and the film is refreshingly spare with the CGI; we most often see Terebithia as the simple patch of woods it is, which adds to the magic when animated creatures start swooping in. The child actors, with the exception of poised Kiera Knightley look-alike Robb, give nicely rough-edged performances. Of course, anyone who read the book in fourth grade (spoiler warning for those who didn't) will recall that its major event is an unexpected death. The final act of the film pulls no emotional punches; the surviving child goes through all five stages of grief, culminating in the building of the titular bridge. As the credits rolled, I expected the children in the theater to be sobbing — but instead, they just looked incredibly pensive. Maybe, for a generation raised on Shrek sequels instead of Old Yeller, Bridge to Terebithia is a necessary dose of pathos. — Gwynne Watkins

Happily N'Ever After wants to be an edgy, derailed version of Cinderella. But for a movie that has unconventionality as its core (and only) concept, it's remarkably given to clichés. Our narrator, Rick the Servant (Freddie Prinze Jr.), isn't happy with "Ella" (Sarah Michelle Gellar) pining after the buff but daft Prince Charming. Rick thinks he would make Ella a far better mate, though it isn't clear in what way Rick is more interesting than the prince, besides being slight and brown-haired rather than blond and muscled. When the storyteller in charge of Fairytale Land goes for a golfing vacation in Scotland, leaving his two helpers to hold down the fort, chaos ensues. The evil stepmother (Sigourney Weaver) stages a take-over of the story, big bad wolves party in the castle (they all sound like extras from The Sopranos), the seven dwarves show up for a fight scene, and everything that's about to happen at any given moment is totally, painfully obvious. Most of the kids in the theater made a candy-run midway through; I should have followed them and not looked back.— Sarah Sundberg

Accomplished director Luc Besson has never been a fan of complex plots, so it would be pointless to knock this one for its simplistic storyline: ten-year-old Arthur (Freddie Highmore) lives with his grandmother (Mia Farrow) in a Connecticut farmhouse coveted by a ruthless businessman. Arthur's grandfather disappeared some years back, supposedly on a journey to the land of the Minimoys, a civilization of microscopic elfin creatures he discovered on a trip to Africa . Lured by the promise of hidden treasure, Arthur, too, gets drawn into the world of the Minimoys, becoming a mini-version of himself and helping this troubled kingdom in its struggle against an army of invading insects (led by the always welcome voice of David Bowie).

The film uneasily mixes twee nostalgia and contemporary pandering; even though the story takes place in the '60s, for example, a fight on a record player in the world of the Minimoys leaps through generations of contemporary music, all overseen by the street stylings of Snoop Dogg. But that's nothing new; the Shrek films regularly peddle such anachronisms. As annoying as it may be for adults, it's a minor nitpick. The real problem of Arthur and the Invisibles is how lazy and uninspired it all is, with the Minimoys designed to look like standard-issue video game avatars, and the breakneck escapes of the strung-together plot coming straight out of Saturday morning TV. Good kid flicks have a genuine ability to awe, to envelop us and make us suspend disbelief. Here, the only disbelief comes from wondering how one of the more inventive action filmmakers of the past two decades directed his energies towards creating something so disappointingly facile. — Bilge Ebiri

The title of this film is a little misleading, as sad-sack security guard Ben Stiller winds up spending not one, but three nights in the Museum of Natural History, figuring out how to rein in several floors' worth of unruly, enchanted exhibits. A pretty tall order, given that he must also nab the crooks who stole an ancient Egyptian tablet, spark what passes for romance with an implausible bombshell docent, and, yawn, bolster his son's flagging faith in him.

Had director Shawn Levy been disciplined enough to end this tale with Stiller's first sunrise, Night at the Museum could have been something really special, an Animal House for the elementary school set. There's a gleeful anarchy at play in scenes where our hero is besieged in short order by a host of reanimated African mammals, thumb-sized Roman soldiers and the bones of a briefly terrifying Tyrannosaurus Rex. Unfortunately, the script demands that Stiller must learn something in the process, specifically some soppy, generic trope about believing in yourself before your kid can believe in you, too.

This sort of synthetic quest for meaning only detracts from the dramatization of what every museumgoer has long suspected: those dioramas come to life the second you turn your back. —Ayun Halliday

Those seeking to traumatize young children need look no further than Eragon. The six-year-old seated beside me "watched" the bulk of this garish fantasy/adventure with the brim of his flannel cap shielding his eyes, desperately applying pressure to his earflaps. (Never would I have dreamed that anything could make me view the alternately shrill and insipid stars of PBS's animated Dragon Tales in a new, more positive light.) Saphira, the dragon attached to Eragon's titular hero, speaks in the dulcet tones of Rachel Weisz, but is otherwise so devoid of personality that I started rooting for Durza, the evil magician/Marilyn Manson lookalike, to zap her with one of his deadly black fingernails, thus releasing both me and the miserable child beside me from our individual torments.

Alas, the new cinematic paradigm mandates that a hundred million dollars worth of hollow special effects must be deployed before our hero and his computer-generated dragon can rescue the smirking princess from the clutches of King John Malkovich, mincing and snarling like a drama queen with an unwholesome attraction to hot wax. Apologies to H.R. Pufnstuf and his predecessor, Puff the Magic, but remember the good old days when the dragon was the bad guy? — Ayun Halliday

Watching Jim Carrey pilot How the Grinch Stole Christmas over the top and into the ground was heartbreaking. Compared to the muted glory that was the animated original, the remake was boring, too long and a perfect example of how good things can get lost under piles and piles of money. With that in mind, I was a virulent naysayer when I heard that Paramount was releasing a live action remake of Charlotte's Web. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the franchise — I loved both the book and the original movie — but the sins of the Carrey made me reluctant. As I headed out to the screening, I was like a burned divorcee getting back into the dating scene.

But, a Christmas miracle, the movie isn't nearly the disaster I anticipated. It isn't excellent, but it's good like a house with a decent foundation is good. The CGI is realistic and there is a notable performance by Steve Buscemi as Templeton the rat, but the true strength remains E.B. White's writing. While he did write it for children, White made sure to use big words and even bigger themes — death, rebirth, classism. In fact, the worst part of the movie is when it chooses to not rely on the strength of the original words and instead on new, rapid-fire, "adult" dialogue, presumably tossed in to keep parents entertained. It comes off as easy and stupid. That aside, I actually enjoyed this movie — and, yes, cried like a baby at the end. — Cord Jefferson

The inaugural film from Sony Pictures' new animation division doesn't seem so much like a stand-alone film as it does a CGI-by-numbers, in which the points of previous successful children's films (ethnically stereotyped animals, check! A journey of friendship and self-discovery, check! Sloppily written ballads by a rock star of yesteryear — in this case, Paul Westerberg — check!) are thrown together with hope for similar success. Unfortunately, due to strikingly lackluster animation, an unfunny, uninspired script, and a second-tier cast of sitcom graduates, it fails to entertain, let alone reach the transcendent peaks of similar, earlier offerings. Or maybe we're just not so easily impressed anymore.

Part back-to-land manifesto, part potty-humored comedy, Open Season is the story of Boog (voiced by Martin Lawrence, the poor man's Eddie Murphy), a 900-lb. grizzly bear living comfortably in the garage of kindly forest ranger Beth (Debra Messing) until she reluctantly returns him to the wild. Her timing couldn't have been worse; the other animals refuse to accept the domesticated stranger in their midst, it's three days until the beginning of hunting season and psychotic hunter Shaw (Gary Sinise), a redneck who believes that the animal kingdom is dead set on nothing less than total domination of humans, is out for blood. Luckily, Boog has some help from one-horned buck Elliot (Ashton Kutcher), and eventually, the animals rise up in self-defense to take back the forest as their own.

The film has been criticized for its alleged anti-gun stance, and perhaps anticipating this, the filmmakers have inserted a few half-hearted swipes at boys who want to sing and dance and people who drink lattes. This appeasement did render one moment unintentionally hilarious, when a big, butch buck sneers at Boog: "I've heard of you. You're the bear who got thumped in the butt by squirrels." Boog's reply: "They had nuts!" — Rachel Shukert

I was never much of a horse girl; I somehow managed to skip that phase of female sexual development, advancing straight to human boys, and when I see an image of a young girl astride a glossy steed, cantering wildly through the mountains with the wind in her hair, I feel not a sense of exhilarating freedom, but rather think to myself: Shouldn't she be wearing some kind of helmet?

But despite these inauspicious qualifications, I thoroughly enjoyed the highly watchable Flicka. Based on Mary O'Hara's 1941 classic children's book My Friend Flicka, the story centers on sixteen-year-old Katy McLaughlin (Alison Lohman), a sensitive horse fanatic. Home from boarding school at her family's gorgeous (but struggling) Wyoming ranch, Katy is saved one morning from a mountain lion attack by a feral horse. It's love at first sight, but her overprotective rancher father (Tim McGraw, who for some reason was really doing it for me here) conspires to keep them apart, for reasons that are never quite clear. No matter. A loving rendering of the American West, complete with stunning vistas, wild mustangs, loving but emotionally unavailable fathers, and rodeo clowns, the film transcends its hokey plot and stilted dialogue ("We're the same, she and I," the main character states repeatedly, referring to the title equine) with sensitive performances, a sumptuous visual style half Brokeback Mountain, half Martha Stewart Living (and really, are the two so different?) and some surprisingly touching, if sentimental insights about the father-daughter relationship. A must-see for the budding equestrienne set. And if you're a grown-up and horses aren't your thing, you can always re-imagine the whole affair to amusing effect as a dark sexual metaphor. — Rachel Shukert

Conformity is bad, animated kidflicks repeatedly tell us. Be yourself; flaunt your individuality; Robert Frost took the road less traveled, and it led him to this really hot cocktail waitress whose husband conveniently worked the graveyard shift. A worthy message, perhaps, but rather hard to take seriously when espoused by the most rigidly codified genre in Hollywood. Waddling in the beloved footsteps of March of the Penguins, Happy Feet lugs the Dumbo template all the way to Antarctica, where one newborn chick, Mumble (eventually voiced by Elijah Wood), can't seem to locate his "heartsong," defined here as a musty pop standard that one warbles, karaoke-like, at the object of his/her affection.Instead, Mumble likes to tap dance, and that means that he must leave Japan -- sorry, his own flock -- and seek acceptance from fellow stubborn misfits. Happy Feet's notion of unorthodoxy, I'm frightened to report, involves Robin Williams as a cholo-accented penguin from the other side of the 'berg.

There was good reason to hope that this paint-by-numbers effort might occasionally wander outside the digital lines, since it's the brainchild of George Miller, whose Babe: Pig in the City ranks among the most demented talking-animal pictures ever made. Apart from a thrillingly kinetic leopard seal attack and a kooky climactic plea for environmental ethics, however, originality and imagination are in dispiritingly short supply. Sadly, animated features don't even offer the pleasure of distinctive voice work anymore -- Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman (equally forgettable as Mumble's parents) provide a much better photo-op at the premiere. Still, you can always amuse yourself trying to figure out whether it ever occurred to Miller, or anybody else at Warner Bros., that the sight of a bird with different-colored feathers tapping and grinning his way into people's hearts might have some unfortunate associations. Happy feets, do yo' stuff. -- Mike D'Angelo