Happy Feet

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Semper Fidelis

2 Timothy 2:24-25
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My dad took all the grandkids to see Happy Feet yesterday. We obviously went because herding 10 kids would have been quite impossible for him.

All I can say is WOW! That was really good. I thought I would be bored with a movie about Penguins but it was so funny and so entertaining. One of my nephews, Jason (5), said to his parents after: "I don't think I laughed the whole time." But when my brother aske"thd if he liked it he said yes.

The basic plot is there is a penguin that is injured before birth because his dad drops the egg in the cold. In real life that egg would have been toast but in the movie he has a birth defect: he can't sing. All of the penguins in the movie are more or less talented singers and are supposed to discover "their song". The singing and the music is really good.

Well the main character can't sing but boy, can he dance. Anyway, that kind of behavior is unacceptable penguin behavior.

Anyway, I won't give away too much if you want to see it but he's banished because he prefers dancing to singing and is leading the young penguins astray with this behavior.

Now to the thing that will keep some of you away:

There is more than just a slight metaphor that the penguins are deeply religious (read Christian) and are so ensconced in their extremism that they will not listen to the young dancing penguin nor will they accept him for being different. The lead penguin is a tall penguin with a Scottish brogue. Maybe these are Presbyterians? Early in the movie when the males are all circling around keeping their eggs warm it is really cool listening to him motivating the other male penguins. Well, he comes around to seeing that he's wrong about the "Great Guin" at the end.

The other thing is that it's a bit of a "Quit taking away all the fish in the south and killing the penguins you evil fisherman..." kind of movie and the way it gets around to it is kind of silly.

Anyhow, I can overlook both parts that made me roll my eyes. The penguins, after all, don't believe in the Trinity so the only faith that is shattered is a false faith even if the lead penguins do seem like Christians.

My kids were dancing in the aisles at the end of the movie. The music, dancing, and singing were just SO good. I would watch this movie again by myself without my kids and predict that when it comes out on DVD that we'll be playing that movie constantly for our children.
 
I understand the penguin that is shunned by the religious leaders is supposed to be a metaphor for a gay penguin...aka...why can't you just accept me the way I am.

We haven't seen it and won't.
 
We took the kids to see it around Thanksgiving. I found the movie terribly boring. Aside from that, I was disappointed that kids movies are being used as a vehicle to further the liberal agenda in this country.
 
Funny how one person finds it boring. I very much enjoyed it.

Regarding Mumble (the main character) being gay - hardly. The main idea is that he's after some really attractive female penguin but can dance (not sing) due to a birth defect.

Yes, religious intolerance is a metaphor of the film and one could stretch the "...there's nothing wrong with me because I was born this way..." any way you want but you could also see the zealotry as a form of Pharisaism that is worthy of condemnation and would be a good model to talk to older kids about the Penguins being like deep South Baptists who have dry counties that forbid card playing and dancing as a form of man-made righteousness. You could also use the Penguins as an example of idol worship and demonstrate how false religion produces dumb rules like "no dancing".

The environmental thing was just silly and unbelievable. It kind of ruined an otherwise good movie that the UN bans commercial fishing in the south pole after seeing Penguins dance.
 
Okay...

Maybe my experience is a little different, but here goes my story:


We do not get to see many movies (3 in the past 3 years, Spiderman 2, Cars and Happy Feet). We are here in Indonesia now and so the opportunities are now even more limited.

But, for the week of New Year's we had some extra time, so we took our friends to go down the hill into the city and see Happy Feet.

My friends are Muslim and one woman even wore her headcovering.




So, you can imagine when the penguins started shaking their penguin butts and singing to songs about 'lovin'" one another, I got fairly embarrassed. The fat prophet penguin taking his "chicks" to the back for instance is clearly sexual.




Life is reproduction. Not fitting in means not getting a mate. Life is materialistic and anything related to God is a means of social control. We have to boldly be ourselves and uncover the deception of this superstition called religion and improve our own world (through environmentalist means maybe and tolerance).

This is the Gospel of the West - packages in a fuzzy penguin movie.




I noticed the sexual overtones like I never would have noticed in the States and only when distanced from it can one really apprecaite the sexualization of our Western culture. Even penguins movies basically say that life is about finding a piece of tail.


Also, in Indonesia things are more communal and not so individualistic. And religion is the glue that holds things together. Therefore, the movie does "Preach" Western individualism and non-religious sermons throughout.



Strangley enough, the environmental issues were no big deal becasue the Third World is full of trash. Greenpeace can work here all they want. The environmentalist wackiness is appreciated rather than seen as sillly like it is in the States Just last year a mountain of trash had an avanlanche (trash-alanch maybe) and killed dozens of Indonesians. This happened in the city where I am living now.



I found the animation fascinating and the fish chase sequences very exciting. But my 2 year old son got bored.








A final note: Cartoons are some of the most dangerous forms of media available!!!! The days of Tom and Jerry are gone.

EVERY cartoon nowadays seems to want to preach. J

ust give me a frying pan in the face anyday!
 
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