Vocal Talent: Robin Williams, Nicole Kidman, Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman
Directed by: George Miller
Studio: Warner Home Video
Video: 2.40:1 Widescreen, 1080p
Audio: English, French, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 EX Surround
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Supplements: Two new animated sequences (“Mumble Meets a Blue Whale” and “A Happy Feet Moment”); “Dance Like a Penguin: Stomp to the Beat” private dance lesson with Savion Glover; “I Love to Singa” classic cartoon; theatrical trailer; two music videos (Gia’s “Hit Me Up” and Prince’s “The Song of the Heart”)
Length: 108 minutes
Movie Rating: ****; AV Rating: ****
The Academy Award winner for best animated feature, “Happy Feet” follows the story of a young Emperor Penguin named Mumble (Elijah Wood). In the Emperor Penguin nation, the ability to sing is all-important and unfortunately for Mumble, he is the worst singer in the world. Although he can’t sing, Mumble is a natural born tap dancer, a seemingly cursed talent that eventually gets him cast out of his penguin tribe. On his own for the first time in his life, Mumble is befriended by the Adelie Amigos. This band of penguins is very different from the typical Emperor Penguin in several ways including that they value pebbles over singing talent. Together with his new friends, Mumble sets out on an epic adventure culminating in self-discovery. This is a wonderful animated film that is as good as any animated film released in the past several years. The voice talent is A-List, the animation stunning, and the music infectious. With its positive closing message, this is definitely a film to revisit time and again. Highly recommended.
In terms of HD video quality, this direct-to-digital conversion, Blu-ray DVD is excellent. Images are pristine with razor sharp detail (so much so that individual feathers and snowflakes are discernable). Colors are vivid and robust with fully-saturated hues. Picture defect mastering is perfect with no flaws or compression artifacts. Simply put, “Happy Feet” is a reference-quality video presentation. The overall audio quality is very good with the compressed English Dolby Digital 5.1 EX track serving as the basis for this review. The soundtrack smartly incorporates all of the discrete channels into the mix. Dialogue is crisp and intelligible. The surround channels are actively utilized for both the sound effects and musical numbers. The low frequency effects channel is punchy and tight but not explosive. A welcome addition to this Blu-ray DVD would have been an uncompressed 5.1 track and/or a lossless Dolby TrueHD/DTS-MA track, as that would have help put the audio of “Happy Feet” on par with its outstanding video.
– Calvin Harding, Jr.
