Nicole Kidman's Voice Is Creepy

Movie: Happy Feet, directed by George Miller
Reccomendation: Dee
Reason: Stomp stomp clap, stomp stomp clap, stomp clap stomp clap stomp stomp clap. In other words, she wanted to see dancing penguins.

Happy Feet is a strange sort of movie. It's wonderfully animated, with a great deal of attention to detail. It's got an interesting set of plots running. The voice talent is decent. It's just...weird. To get the usual questions out of the way, yes, I did enjoy the movie, no it wasn't the best movie ever. Yes, it was really weird.

I think Hugh Jackman is my new hero this year. His performance in The Fountain was enough to send me into bliss, and he managed to sing his way into my head again in Happy Feet. Elijah Wood was fairly nondescript, vocally speaking. Brittany Murphy was her usual distinctive self, and managed to pull off a bit of a surprise by being a reasonably capable singer. Robin Williams bounced off the walls as he always does. Steve Irwin's voice came as a bit of a surprise though given the content of the film, his contribution makes plenty of sense. Nicole Kidman seemed midway between Norma Jean/Marilyn Monroe and leaving-a-pretty-corpse Satine, which I found oddly jarring. In fact, I was picking up a bit of a 'Baz Luhrmann' vibe from the entire proceeding (which isn't a bad thing, I love me some Baz).

The weirdness of the movie comes from the plot, which suffers from an awkward shifting of focus and momentum here and there throughout the film. None of it felt tacked on or added 'just cause', but the directions the story took were certainly unexpected at several points. Many critics seem to be lambasting Happy Feet due to the messages the movie seems to be passing along to the audience. I can certainly see their point-the movie is not subtle on its environmental message or its 'be yourself' attitude, but the latter isn't rare in today's movies. It's the rather stark portrayal of zoos and the implied casual attitude of humans towards the environment that seems to have people up in arms. I think the movie went a little heavy on those points-they're harsh, compared to the otherwise upbeat tone of the show.

-6/365 done, 359/365 to go