Just Films and That is a podcast that celebrates underrated and underseen films. In this episode, we take a look at Happy Feet, which Alice reckons might be a bit underrated. You can listen to the full podcast episode of Happy Feet, and all episodes of Just Films and That, wherever you get your podcasts
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 Every penguin is born.
00:02 Three feet.
00:03 Get under here, get warm.
00:05 Watch the beak, watch the beak.
00:06 The beak!
00:07 The beak!
00:08 With a song to sing.
00:09 So Happy Feet from 2006 then.
00:12 For those of you at home who don't know,
00:13 Happy Feet is the story of Mumbles the penguin,
00:16 who's born into a clan of penguins,
00:18 where singing is really important because you find your heart song
00:22 and your heart song is how you find your soulmate.
00:25 Not only can he not sing, but he can tap dance,
00:27 which to the penguins of the clan is abhorrent
00:31 and they essentially exile him from the clan,
00:34 which sends him on an adventure.
00:36 Alice, you picked this one, so tell the people at home,
00:38 why did you pick this one?
00:40 So I picked this because I thought that Happy Feet
00:42 might be a little bit underrated.
00:45 So at the time of recording, on IMDb, it gets 6.4 out of 10,
00:49 and then over on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience give it 70%,
00:52 and then the critics give it 76%,
00:55 so not too bad from the critics there,
00:57 but that IMDb score did surprise me a little bit.
01:00 There is a lot that I really enjoy about this film.
01:02 I think it looks fantastic,
01:04 and they've gone for this very realistic style
01:07 when it comes to the animals and the landscape in the film,
01:10 and I think this was a really clever idea
01:12 instead of going for sort of very cartoony,
01:14 very over-the-top looking creatures.
01:16 I think the landscape of Antarctica is designed so beautifully.
01:20 You really appreciate the sort of vastness
01:22 and the harshness of the landscape.
01:24 I also love the messages in this film.
01:26 It's a lot about self-acceptance,
01:28 but then also learning to accept other people as well,
01:31 and I really appreciate the journey that Mumble goes on.
01:34 - What's wrong with his feet? - Oh, there's just a little thing
01:37 he's got going. It will grow out of it.
01:39 (GASPS)
01:41 Yeah, I quite enjoyed it. Like you said, it's really colourful.
01:43 It's got a really great cast as well.
01:45 Like you say, really nice ideas in there,
01:47 really nice messages around being different, accepting yourself,
01:50 although there's also an environmental message in there as well,
01:53 which is really good. It's a jukebox musical as well to some extent,
01:56 so there's some really good songs in there.
01:58 I think there's Prince in there, Abba, Queen.
02:00 Can you bring yourself to say anything you didn't like about this?
02:03 There were only a couple of quite small offenders,
02:06 but I think the main thing is that a lot of the animals
02:09 have very different accents, and this is never really explained.
02:12 So you have a group of penguins, but within that group
02:15 some will have Mexican accents or American accents
02:18 or Scottish accents, English accents, etc.
02:20 And this is fine in theory, but give me a bit of context
02:23 as to why this might be.
02:25 And I appreciate that there may be some difficulty
02:27 in trying to nail down what an Antarctica accent may be,
02:31 but I just wanted a bit more context and maybe a bit more backstory
02:34 of how these animals came to be together
02:37 if they were all from different places on the globe.
02:40 I think for me this does skew quite young.
02:42 It probably is for quite young kids.
02:44 I think we've talked about really great family films in the past
02:47 that touch on a little bit of something for everybody
02:50 and that sort of thing, but I don't think this really does.
02:52 I think it does skew a little young for me.
02:54 I think having gone back and watched it and seeing those scores,
02:57 it's perhaps not as underrated as I initially thought,
03:00 but I still think it might be a tiny bit underrated.
03:03 feet.