Happy Feet

HAPPY FEET is an animated movie about a tap-dancing penguin who teaches the other penguins in his flock how to dance along with their already excellent, if derivative, singing.

Compare this to SURF'S UP, an animated movie about a surfing penguin who travels to a tropical island to compete in a surfing competition.

Why compare the two? Because for some reason, animated surfing penguins are more interesting and exciting than animated dancing penguins. I don't know why. I find live-action surfing movies to be remarkably dull (and I surf), but I can watch Astair and Kelly movies all day long. All the excitement of dance vanishes when it's animated, however, even if I know that someone, somewhere, actually did those tap routines so they could get recorded and animated.

So if HAPPY FEET's big draw is the dance numbers, and the dance numbers are flat, what else has it got? Well it has excellent singing (Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, and Nicole Kidman all lend their voices), and yet another tiresome performance from Robin Williams, who is at a point in his career in which he just has to scale things back a little. But those singing performances are hampered by the fact that they're all covers of popular songs, which subtracts from the spell the movie is ostensibly trying to cast.

My 7-yr-old liked HAPPY FEET, but I think it's no SURF'S UP. Give me surfing penguins over dancing penguins any day of the week.

Paris, je t'aime

PARIS, JE T'AIME isn't a film so much as it is a mini film festival. Imagine, if you will, two hours worth of five-minute short films set in Paris, directed by a veritable Who's Who of directors and performed by a veritable Who's Who of French, English, and American actors. These films share a love of Paris, a love so thorough that it may freeze out those who have never been to nor dreamt of the city.

Fortunately for me, my wife and I took a marvelous vacation to Paris some years back and, yes, we fell in love with it. So I was in. But how was the festival? Well, like all festivals, this one offered some memorable and some forgettable films, and it's a good idea to take breaks between blocks of viewing. That said, there's one short with Elijah Wood and Olga Kurylenko that's hypnotic, audacious and absolutely memorable. In fact, it's so good that it makes the disc worth renting on its strength alone.

So, there it is. If you're a francophile, I think you'll surely enjoy this movie. If not, your mileage may vary.

But I liked it.

Everything is Illuminated

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED looks great. It sounds great. It tackles serious issues with whimsy and heart. But it lacks that certain something that takes a picture from good to excellent.

Elijah Wood plays Jonathan Safran “Quirky” Foer (OK, I don’t know if quirky is the character’s actual middle name, but it should be.), a Jewish guy from New York who travels to Ukraine to connect with his family’s past. He meets various quirky characters, some of whom reveal hidden dimensions and some of whom do not. The movie milks cultural dissonance and fractured English for laughs in its early stages, then gradually transitions to poignancy and, perhaps, tragedy toward the end. Problem is, it never transitions away from quirkiness, and that quirkiness draws so much attention to itself that I found myself focusing more on it than on the film’s revelations.

Nevertheless, EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED is a noble and ambitious picture. It neither touched my heart nor blew my mind, but it did take me to new places and introduce me to new people, all while keeping me only minimally aware of time. I give it three out of five sunflowers.