Yesterday, I picked up two movies I've been dying to see: Happy Feet Two and The Muppets. I only had a chance to see Happy Feet Two. I made a few comments to a friend about it, but I feel that sharing them here is not a bad idea.
In the first movie, Gloria is played by Britney Murphy. She had a beautiful voice and made the character to be a soft spoken, soul girl. However, with the passing of Britney Murphy in 2009, Gloria is played by Pink, in Happy Feet Two. I love Pink as an artist. She's created many songs that I absolutely love (like "So What"). However, she created a different Gloria than the audiences originally saw. She still tried to give her the soft spoken aspect, but she lost the soul singer part. The voice was still beautiful, but the chemistry Britney Murphy's Gloria created with Elijah Wood's Mumble was missing. There was a different, weirder chemistry between Pink's Gloria and Mumble.
I also felt that the message from Happy Feet was missing in its sequel. The main message of Happy Feet was to show the world how illegal fishing hurts the ecosystem of Antarctica. Happy Feet Two just showed an over used message that if we all work together, we can overcome any obstacle--singing and dancing help a lot. There's only a touch of a world wide message about the harms of global warming. (SPOILER ALERT!) The ice berg that traps the Empire Penguins is caused by over all warming waters. And the puffin from Iceland, only hints that his land turned green because of warming (though Iceland has been green a long time). In Happy Feet, you see people working together to stop the fishing in the Antarctic. In Happy Feet Two, puffin-eating fishers stop to start to help the penguins, but bugger off as soon as a nasty storm hits. There's no man-made help. The message is still an important one, but I just don't feel it meets the expectations provided by the first movie.
Maybe, I'll have something fun to say when I've finished The Muppets.
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