tap tap tappity tap tap
xposted to moviebuffs & 
Multi·Genre·Fandom
There's this old joke, that I first heard on The Prarie Home Companion, involving penguins that this movie vaguely reminds me of.
It goes: One penguin walks passed another one and then stops for a second. He looks at him and says, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were wearing a tuxedo."
The other penguin looks back at him and replies, "How do you know I'm not?"
10:50 AM 11/30/06 · It's weird because the main character of this film is an odd little penguin named Mumbles and the pattern on his feathers, so different from the others, is that of a tuxedo. Why he looks different may have something to do with what happened when he was still in the egg, it may not, but it's never adequately explained.
Before I went to go see this movie, which I've mentioned before if not here then elsewhere,
Raven told me she didn't want to see it because there's a clubbing scene in it; think baby seals and baseball bats. I didn't believe it for a minute, bizarre rumor, but kept an eye open for it when I went to go with
niveK...
...though the fact I had to pay for my ticket and his, given that this was a birthday (MINE) outing, astounds me!
Movie starts before Mumbles actually gets in on the scene, with the courtship of his parents and an interesting bit of Emperor Penguin culture. It holds that all of their kind are born with a song in their heart and that's the path to their happiness. Apparently while he was still in the egg, Mumble's father briefly misplaced his egg; penguin males keep the egg huddled under them as they huddle in masses with their kind during the long Winter while the females are away. Anyway, Mumbles was born with no song but an ability none of his kind had...
...tap dancing! This made him more than a little something of an outcast. Moreso as he has the worst singing voice anyone's ever heard.
At some point early on, after dodging his 2nd avoidance of a predatory encounter, he encounters a different kind of penguin. A little gang of them actually that lead him to more. Their ways are not the ways he was brought up with and he gains confidance from it. That and something of a quest.
I should mention there's references to alien abduction, which is ironic considering that I've made comparisons in the past about it and how humans tag animals for zoological studies, and a rather cultish behavior pattern that the Emperor Penguins kinda have going.
The one thing I really loved about this movie, almost more than anything else, was the fact they maintained the predator/prey dynamic quite effectively. A lot of kids movies, if this was a kids movie, tend to go against the grain where that's concerned but not here. The penguins are all cool with each other, regardless of species, but there're seals trying to eat them, other birds that eat penguins because the fish they normally eat are harder to find, and orca (killer whales)...
...which may be the clubbing thing
Raven heard about.
Unless you watch the nature channel or something like it, which I do from time to time, you may not be aware that orca have a rather cat like tendency where their hunting and potential food is involved. They play with them and while I don't know if the little tennis match they were playing with the penguins is realstically accurate, I have seen them toss seals high in the air before chowing down.
Not to worry. Only thing I have seen of actual eating in this film was fish...teeny tiny little fish.
It's also kinda cool that there's actual people in this movie. Not computer generated like everything else, with the possible exception of the first 2 we see through the glass of a zoo, all the people in this movie are actual life and not memorex.
There's more but I'm trying to be informative without ruining it. You should go see it.
See it now!
As a given, you really should stay for the credits. There's a lot of cool stuff going on with the penguins through the first half...which was equally cool as they broke the cast up by animal species...but it was the very end that was the best. Something beautiful happened at the very end of the credits...
...but that would be telling!
Multi·Genre·Fandom
There's this old joke, that I first heard on The Prarie Home Companion, involving penguins that this movie vaguely reminds me of.
It goes: One penguin walks passed another one and then stops for a second. He looks at him and says, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were wearing a tuxedo."
The other penguin looks back at him and replies, "How do you know I'm not?"
10:50 AM 11/30/06 · It's weird because the main character of this film is an odd little penguin named Mumbles and the pattern on his feathers, so different from the others, is that of a tuxedo. Why he looks different may have something to do with what happened when he was still in the egg, it may not, but it's never adequately explained.
Before I went to go see this movie, which I've mentioned before if not here then elsewhere,
Raven told me she didn't want to see it because there's a clubbing scene in it; think baby seals and baseball bats. I didn't believe it for a minute, bizarre rumor, but kept an eye open for it when I went to go with
niveK...
...though the fact I had to pay for my ticket and his, given that this was a birthday (MINE) outing, astounds me!
Movie starts before Mumbles actually gets in on the scene, with the courtship of his parents and an interesting bit of Emperor Penguin culture. It holds that all of their kind are born with a song in their heart and that's the path to their happiness. Apparently while he was still in the egg, Mumble's father briefly misplaced his egg; penguin males keep the egg huddled under them as they huddle in masses with their kind during the long Winter while the females are away. Anyway, Mumbles was born with no song but an ability none of his kind had...
...tap dancing! This made him more than a little something of an outcast. Moreso as he has the worst singing voice anyone's ever heard.
At some point early on, after dodging his 2nd avoidance of a predatory encounter, he encounters a different kind of penguin. A little gang of them actually that lead him to more. Their ways are not the ways he was brought up with and he gains confidance from it. That and something of a quest.
I should mention there's references to alien abduction, which is ironic considering that I've made comparisons in the past about it and how humans tag animals for zoological studies, and a rather cultish behavior pattern that the Emperor Penguins kinda have going.
The one thing I really loved about this movie, almost more than anything else, was the fact they maintained the predator/prey dynamic quite effectively. A lot of kids movies, if this was a kids movie, tend to go against the grain where that's concerned but not here. The penguins are all cool with each other, regardless of species, but there're seals trying to eat them, other birds that eat penguins because the fish they normally eat are harder to find, and orca (killer whales)...
...which may be the clubbing thing
Raven heard about.
Unless you watch the nature channel or something like it, which I do from time to time, you may not be aware that orca have a rather cat like tendency where their hunting and potential food is involved. They play with them and while I don't know if the little tennis match they were playing with the penguins is realstically accurate, I have seen them toss seals high in the air before chowing down.
Not to worry. Only thing I have seen of actual eating in this film was fish...teeny tiny little fish.
It's also kinda cool that there's actual people in this movie. Not computer generated like everything else, with the possible exception of the first 2 we see through the glass of a zoo, all the people in this movie are actual life and not memorex.
There's more but I'm trying to be informative without ruining it. You should go see it.
See it now!
As a given, you really should stay for the credits. There's a lot of cool stuff going on with the penguins through the first half...which was equally cool as they broke the cast up by animal species...but it was the very end that was the best. Something beautiful happened at the very end of the credits...
...but that would be telling!