Tuesday, November 21, 2006

happy feet

I took the kids to see Happy Feet yesterday.

Let it be said first that the computer-animated movie thing has been glutted into the ground. Toy Story was neat. Toy Story 2 was also neat. Now every kids' movie is an improvisation on Toy Story. Come on!! An entire population of child actors is starving in Hollywood, here. Feed the children. Give a couple of them a paycheck and some face time in front of the camera again.

The studio mommies will thank you.

And also, I've seen so many kids' movies in the past seven years that I feel utterly exhausted of them. So much so that last week I actually blurted out at the preschool queue, "I'm tired of kids' movies! Why can't I ever get to see some adult films?" and everyone looked at me like I'm some kind of pervert.

No, not adult adult! Just...real people, in regular clothes, doing exciting and impossible things like running across a spray of gunfire without ever getting hit! People with unfathomable credit limits jumping planes to fly to other countries for no apparent reason!

Is it too much to ask?

I probably wouldn't have taken the kids to see Happy Feet were it not for the knowledge that Robin Williams is (somewhere) in it. And I love Robin Williams. Anything he's in I'll pay to see. And he does add everything that's vital to the movie. Were he not in it, my consideration of the movie would be far lower.

Happy Feet is a charming if tiresome eco-musical about individuality and the cessation of marine harvesting, as told through the whimsical bright blue eyes of an irrepressibly optimistic (and slightly birth-injured) penguin.

I love music, I always have music playing somewhere in the background where ever I happen to be if I can help it, and even I got nauseated by the endless SINGING. (I guess I won't be invited to any showings of "Singin' In the Rain" soon.) I didn't get the whole "find your heartsong" thing. I really didn't. Lost me on that one.

But the kids loved it. They kept talking about it on the drive home, even while I almost hit a deer and had to slam on the brakes and come to a complete stop on the highway while the deer blinked and looked at me in a long, fractious moment before turning and running the other way.

Which, by the way -- the kids are out of school, all this week. I didn't mention it?

Maybe I just need a nap.