Happy Feet


Happy Feet is a 2006 animated jukebox musical comedy film directed and produced by George Miller and written by Miller, John Collee, Judy Morris and Warren Coleman. It stars Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving, Anthony LaPaglia, Magda Szubanski and Steve Irwin. In the film, Mumble, a tap-dancing emperor penguin who lacks the ability to sing a heartsong to attract a soulmate and is ridiculed by his peers and family, departs on a journey across Antarctica to learn what is causing the local fish population to decline.
Happy Feet was the first animated film produced by Kennedy Miller and Animal Logic. An international co-production between the United States and Australia, the film was produced at Sydney-based visual effects and animation studio Animal Logic. The film was released in North America on 17 November 2006 and in Australia on 26 December. A planned IMAX 3D release was cancelled due to budgetary issues.
Happy Feet received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for its visuals, storyline and songs, and grossed $384 million against its $100 million budget, becoming the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2006. It earned the inaugural BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film, and the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and was nominated for the Annie Award and the Saturn Award for Best Animated Feature. A sequel, Happy Feet Two, was released in 2011.

Plot

Every emperor penguin attracts a mate by singing a unique "heartsong". If the male penguin's heartsong matches the female's song, the two penguins mate. Norma Jean, a female penguin, falls for Memphis, a male penguin and they become mates. They lay an egg, which Memphis cares for while Norma Jean leaves with the other females to fish. While the males struggle through the harsh winter, Memphis briefly drops the egg. The resulting chick, Mumble, is unable to sing but is nevertheless enamored with Gloria, a female penguin who is regarded as the most talented of her age. One day, Mumble discovers he is able to tap dance before encountering a group of hostile skua, with a leader who is tagged with a yellow band, which he says is from an alien abduction. Mumble narrowly escapes the hungry birds by falling into a crevice.
Now a young adult, Mumble is frequently ridiculed by the elders and their leader Noah. After escaping from a leopard seal attack, Mumble befriends five Adelie penguins named Ramón, Nestor, Lombardo, Rinaldo and Raul, known collectively as "the Amigos", who embrace Mumble's dance moves and assimilate him into their group. After seeing a hidden human excavator in an avalanche, they opt to ask Lovelace, a rockhopper penguin, about its origin. Lovelace has the plastic rings of a six pack entangled around his neck, saying that they have been bestowed upon him by mystic beings.
For the emperor penguins, it is mating season and Gloria is the center of attention. The Amigos unsuccessfully attempt to help Mumble win her affection by having Ramón sing a Spanish version of "My Way" behind Mumble, with the latter lip syncing. After Mumble desperately begins tap dancing in synch with her song, she falls for him and the youthful penguins join in for singing and dancing to "Boogie Wonderland". The elders are appalled by Mumble's conduct, which they see as the reason for their lean fishing season. Memphis begs Mumble to stop dancing, for his own sake, but when Mumble refuses, he is exiled.
Mumble and the Amigos return to Lovelace, only to find him being choked by the plastic rings. Lovelace confesses they were snagged on him while swimming off the forbidden shores, beyond the land of the elephant seals. Not long into their journey, Gloria encounters them, wishing to become Mumble's mate. Fearing for her safety, he ridicules Gloria, driving her away.
At the forbidden shore, Mumble, Lovelace and the Amigos are attacked by two orcas, during which Lovelace gets free from the plastic rings. After escaping, they find a fishing boat, which steals their fish. Mumble exhaustingly pursues it alone, eventually washing up on the shore of Florida, where he is rescued and kept at Sea World with Magellanic penguins. After a long and secluded confinement in addition to fruitlessly trying to communicate with the humans, he is about to succumb to madness, when he unexpectedly reveals his dancing skills to the humans, who are all amazed. He is released back into the wild, with a tracking device attached to his back. He returns to his colony and challenges the will of the elders. Memphis reconciles with him, just as a research team arrives, verifying Mumble's statements of "aliens" existing. The entire colony engages in dance in front of the research team, whose expedition footage prompts a worldwide debate, which eventually leads to the banning of all Antarctic overfishing, satisfying both the emperor penguins and the Amigos.

Voice cast

The cast have been sorted into the different categories and are listed in order of the end credits:
Adélie penguins:
Emperor penguins:
  • Elijah Wood as Mumble, a premature Emperor penguin who has a talent of tap-dancing but is unable to sing after his father accidentally dropped him as an egg, exposing him to the elements.
  • * E. G. Daily as baby Mumble.
  • Brittany Murphy as Gloria, an Emperor penguin and Mumble's love interest.
  • * Alyssa Shafer as baby Gloria
  • Hugh Jackman as Memphis, an Emperor penguin, Mumble's father, and Norma Jean's mate. Memphis is named after Elvis Presley's hometown and is inspired by Presley himself.
  • Nicole Kidman as Norma Jean, an Emperor penguin elder, Mumble's mother, and Memphis's mate. Norma Jean is named after Marilyn Monroe's birthname and is inspired by Monroe herself.
  • Hugo Weaving as Noah the Elder, an Emperor penguin elder who opposes Mumble for his appearance.
  • Magda Szubanski as Miss Viola, an Emperor penguin and Mumble's teacher
  • Miriam Margolyes as Mrs. Astrakhan, an Emperor penguin
  • Fat Joe as Seymour, Mumble's friend
  • * Cesar Flores as baby Seymour
Rockhopper:
  • Robin Williams as Lovelace, a Northern rockhopper penguin and the narrator who tells his origins to Mumble and the Amigos about the "alien abduction".
Skuas:
  • Anthony LaPaglia as Skua Boss, the leader of the skuas who targets young penguins to eat it alive.
  • Danny Mann as Dino, a skua
  • Mark Klastorin as Vinnie, a skua
  • Michael Cornacchia as Frankie
Elephant seals:
Others:
Additional voices by J. Grant Albrecht, Logan Arens, Dee Bradley Baker, Charles Bartlett, Shane Baumel, T.J. Beacom, Kwesi Boakye, A.J. Buckley, Erin Chambers, Rickey D'Shon Collins, Scott E. Cox, Django Craig, Nicholas DeLaurentis, Olivia DeLaurentis, Chris Edgerly, Efrain Figueroa, Jeff Fischer, Sonje Fortag, Spencer Ganus, Khamani Griffin, Khadijah Haqq, Aldis Hodge, Fisher Keen, Arif S. Kinchen, Michael Krepack, Libby Lynch, Diane Michelle, Ryan Munck, Christian Pikes, Steve Pinto, Zoe Raye, Noreen Reardon, Eliana Reyes, Nicole Richmond, Aimee Roldon, Kyndell Rose, Alyssa Smith, Mari Weiss, Billie Williams, and Rachel York.

Production

Inspirations

As an initial inspiration for the film, George Miller cited an encounter with cinematographer Bill Grimmond during the shooting of The Road Warrior. Grimmond had shot a documentary in Antarctica, and said that Miller should make a film set there, he compared to the "wasteland" desert they were filming in.
Miller was also influenced by Frank Hurley, official photographer of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition and BANZARE expeditions led by Australian geologist Douglas Mawson, as well as the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 led by Ernest Shackleton. Hurley's footage of the AAE, assembled in various forms and later known as Home of the Blizzard, which included footage of penguins leaning against the wind, inspired some of the scenes in Happy Feet.
Happy Feet was also partially inspired by documentaries such as the BBC's Life in the Freezer.

Pre-production

In 2001, during an otherwise non-sequitur meeting, Doug Mitchell impulsively presented Warner Bros. studio president Alan Horn with an early rough draft of the film's screenplay, and asked them to read it while he and Miller flew back to Australia. By the time they had landed, Warner Bros. had decided to provide funding on the film. Production was slated to begin sometime after the completion of the fourth Mad Max film Fury Road, but geopolitical complications pushed Happy Feet to the forefront in early 2003.
According to Miller, the environmental message was not a major part of the original script. "In Australia, we're very, very aware of the ozone hole... and Antarctica is literally the canary in the coal mine for this stuff. So it sort of had to go in that direction". This influence led to a film with a more environmental tone. Miller said, "You can't tell a story about Antarctica and the penguins without giving that dimension".

Technology

The animation is invested heavily in motion capture technology, with the dance scenes acted by human dancers. The tap dancing for Mumble was provided by Savion Glover, who was also co-choreographer for the dance sequences. The dancers went through "Penguin School" to learn how to move like a penguin, and also wore head apparatus to mimic a penguin's beak.
Happy Feet needed an enormous group of computers, and Animal Logic worked with IBM to build a server farm with sufficient processing potential. The film took four years to make. Lighting Supervisor and VFX Department Supervisor Ben Gunsberger said that this was partly because they needed to build new infrastructure and tools. The server farm used IBM BladeCenter framework and BladeCenter HS20 blade servers, which are extremely dense separate computer units, each with two Intel Xeon processors. Rendering took up 17 million CPU hours over a nine-month period.