YMMV / Happy Feet

• Adorkable: Mumble. He dances whenever he's excited, is incredibly polite, and is obviously in love with Gloria.
• All Animation Is Disney:
  • A dark and mature story under the guise of a happy little children’s film with cute and funny singing and dancing animals? The better question would be how or why this ISN’T a Disney film?
  • On top of all that, the film would occasionally be shown on the Disney Channel in the late 2000s/early 2010s, adding to the confusion.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: There's the Green Aesop about overfishing, pollution, global warming and animals in captivity. And then there's the Aesop about being yourself. And then there's the Aesop that you should not put all your faith in religion but also need to take action yourself. And then there's the Acceptance Aesop, where you're encouraged to accept others for who they are. While many Acceptance Aesops in children's films recently have been the Gay Aesop (and that is still some people's interpretation), Happy Feet seems more about accepting people on the Autistic Spectrum.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Perhaps the orcas were just trying to get the plastic holder off of Lovelace's neck the whole time, then chased them onto shore and left? Would explain why they focus on him in particular when the others are perfectly fine meals in and of themselves. Then again, Lovelace is fat and helpless.
• Anvilicious: The "save the penguins" message can get heavy-handed to some.
• Awesome Music:
  • Gloria's rendition of "Somebody to Love" and "Boogie Wonderland" deserve mention. Then again, all the music in the film had the same unique sound and great energy to it. The actual score - as opposed to the songs - has some particularly breathtaking moments.
  • For a bonus, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Brittany Murphy, and Robin Williams are doing their own singing for their characters.
  • The two mashups, "Kiss/Heartbreak Hotel" and "The Joker/Everything I Own," are each awesome in their own respective rights.
  • The off-the-wall-insane cover of "I Wish."
• Broken Base: You'll hear people say that this movie is either an overlooked gem or an overhyped slog without much of an inbetween.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Both of Robin Williams' characters, Ramón and Lovelace. The former even gets a larger role in the second film.
• Fanon: A common theory holds that Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" is actually Mumble's heartsong. He gleefully dances to it as a chick, it comes up throughout the film, and the beat he taps out for Gloria initially seems to match it before mashing up, as heartsongs do, with her song.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Lovelace, played by Robin Williams, is slowly being choked by a soda six pack ring. In 2014, Robin Williams committed suicide by hanging.
• Hype Backlash: Coming out in between March of the Penguins and Surf's Up didn't do this movie's reputation many favors (of course, box office numbers don't lie), nor did its Academy Award win for "Best Animated Feature" at the 2007 Oscars (though to be fair, the other two choices were Cars and Monster House, making it more an award for "least disliked").
• I Am Not Shazam: While he is referred to as Happy Feet in some scenes, the penguin's name is Mumble and not Happy Feet.
• Jerkass Woobie: Memphis. While he's dismissive towards Mumble's tap-dancing habits, and goes along with Noah's accusation toward Mumble based on the fish famine, he's also suffering a tremendous amount of guilt for having dropped him as an egg, which he feels is the cause of Mumble's disabilities, and thereby the shortage, as far as he is concerned. It's also shown that he truly loves his son, which makes him much more sympathetic than he lets on as he feels he has crippled his son with his mistake.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The zoo scene, as well as the two attacks from the seal and whale.
  • A fair amount of people have noted the scene in which Mumble watches the excavator sink into the depths of the ocean as evoking a sense of dread and thalassophobia, particularly the wide shot in which we see just how tiny the huge machine is in comparison. The scene before it also deserves some mention, as the whole thing is incredibly frenetic.
  • The orcas, especially their first appearance, looming fluke-first over the penguins.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The Gameboy Advance version of Happy Feet the video game is a flawed but surprisingly competent platformer but the other versions? Not so much.
• One-Scene Wonder: Both seals - the terrifying leopard seal chase and the elephant seals on the beach (one of whom is voiced by Steve Irwin)!
• Popular with Furries: Those in the Furry fandom who are into birds (Avians) find this movie quite endearing.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Don't expect much going into the Console versions and DS version of Happy Feet the video game. It is essentially a weak DanceDanceRevolution clone with bland fishing and sliding levels spliced in between.
• Questionable Casting: Guess who's doing those impressions of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley! Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, that's who!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Gloria is perfectly willing to defy her own society to join Mumble and his friends on their journey. Rather than allow this to happen so that she can display more of her character, Mumble stupidly decides to Break Her Heart to Save Her, causing her to leave and maintaining her position as little more than a Satellite Love Interest.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The story could have devoted attention to playing with alien tropes, including the concept of Mumble actually encountering real aliens while also interpreting the humans as such. It also could have ended with Mumble seeking out a new colony to share his story after his home colony ostracized him in order to help penguins gradually learn about the outside world. Instead, Mumble never meets aliens, the humans miraculously help him find his original colony despite not having any means of direct communication and penguins instantly accept him back.
  • It also could have had an especially dark ending with Mumble trapped in a zoo and turned into a source of entertainment, locked in isolation...forever. However, this does not occur as soon as it is introduced.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: During some of the more obvious motion capture sequences, as you may have noticed that human anatomy and penguin anatomy is wildly different. Plus there's something unsettling about seeing Elijah Wood's eyes looking out of an otherwise realistic penguin face.
• Viewer Name Confusion: The protagonist is named Mumble. Many viewers misheard and think he's named "Mambo". Others apparently heard it correctly only some of the time, leading to the common misconception that his name was originally Mambo but he gained the nickname Mumble upon the discovery that he can't sing. Putting aside the fact that his bad singing is more screechy than mumbly, he's actually called Mumble from the moment he's born, because he can be heard mumbling from inside his egg. "Mambo" proponents point to a moment in which a crowd is chanting Mumble's name and he tries to redirect them into chanting "Mambo" instead—a callback to the adelie penguins chanting "mambo" earlier in the film. If in fact Mumble was trying to adopt Mambo as a new nickname, he didn't succeed.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The animation for the water and ice in both movies look amazing. Also, all the dancing penguins.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: It's a cute pop tune filled movie... full of psychological drama, religious undertones, and sexual innuendos.
• The Woobie: Mumble! He's constantly treated like garbage by everyone in his community except for his mother and Gloria for his "freakiness" (aka: dancing instead of singing), his music teacher calls him "hardly a penguin at all", he's kicked out of his society when he tries to win over Gloria by dancing and then he gets washed ashore and trapped in a zoo, where he nearly goes insane.

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