Happy Feet (DVD)

March Of The Penguins meets 'The X Factor' in this computer animated family film with a strong ecological message. Happy Feet marks a break from the prevalent style of the computer animated, talking animals family film. The overload of pop culture references, sly subversion and sass worked by Shrek, its sequel and its imitators is pared back for a vision of realistically rendered Antarctic glaciers and anatomically-accurate animals. This colony of Emperor penguins waddles toward the realism of a nature documentary - albeit a nature documentary in which the mating rituals involve the penguins mashing-up contemporary and classic pop. These are the heart songs of the penguins, their individual souls expressed in karaoke. Their great choirs and solos make you wonder if all pop videos could benefit from the casting of some talented animals. Skating over the issue of choreographed penguin action, Happy Feet operates broadly within the laws of nature, and this is its triumph, sparing us the anything-goes marketing executive surrealism of the likes of Chicken Little, the nadir of post-Shrek animated family films.

We open with the courtship of Memphis (Jackman) and Norma Jean (Kidman). He sings Elvis, she trills Prince's 'Kiss', and soon they make beautiful music together. An egg results. As we know from March Of The Penguins, Norma Jean must undertake the exodus across the glaciers for food while Memphis stays behind to protect the egg against the long, dark, howling winter. The fathers huddle together upon this inhospitable landscape, taking their turn to be on the outside of this scrum for body heat. It is rare for contemporary children's films to show such a positive role for dads, as modern mores dictate that fathers should be either dead, evil, or ineffectual.