C'mon Hollywood #129

... No more penguin movies!
by Sturdy

You gotta love Hollywood’s copycat personality. If there’s even a moderate chance of repeating the success of an original, you can all but guarantee there will be either sequels or mimics of that film within the year. So now the kick is any movie with a penguin as the main star and this trend has gone on long enough. Yes, penguins are cute and yes, it’s even cuter to watch them dance and surf, but enough is enough.

We get it, they’re cute, let’s move on.

Don’t get me wrong, I like penguins just fine. I mean, I’ve never met one, but they seem like cool creatures. However, I haven’t seen a good movie featuring a penguin since BATMAN RETURNS. MARCH OF THE PENGUINS was pretty good, but let’s face it, you take out Morgan Freeman’s voice and it’s basically like any program on the Discovery Channel. It wasn’t bad by any means, but watching a group go through that much trouble for sex reminded me too much of high school. Even with that, I’m all for documentaries, the more the merrier, it’s the rest of them that bug me.

Let’s start with HAPPY FEET. Yes, it won the Oscar for best animated film, but given the green theme at this year’s Oscars, any film touching on an environmental issue was going to win. I think HAPPY FEET was easily the most overrated film of 2006. The animation was average and they didn’t even get to the environmental message until the end, almost as an afterthought. Listening to Elijah Wood’s voice and Hugh Jackman do an Elvis impersonation for 90 minutes made me want to hurt penguins, not save them. Plus, the scene with the floating doll head made my niece and nephew cry and that ain’t cool.

Now those are some kick ass penguins!

Then there’s FARCE OF THE PENGUINS, and this prompts me to beg Hollywood to not spoof a documentary ever again, or at least not let Bob Saget be involved. I’ve heard the guy has some decent stand-up routines, but he should not be making movies. As bad as it was, it wasn’t the first time a movie has been quickly made to ride the coattails of the film it’s spoofing. I guess when you think about it, it was a brilliant idea on Saget’s part. All he did was take all the footage not used in MARCH OF THE PENGUINS and do a little voice over work and poof; a feature film.

This is creepy in so many ways.

Finally, there’s SURF’S UP. To me, SURF’S UP is like showing up two hours late to the prom only to realize you’re wearing the same dress as your history teacher. It’s too late, and by now, everyone is sick of penguins. I realize making a movie featuring cute penguins dancing, surfing and making fart jokes is going to attract everyone under five years old, but so do ice-cream trucks and cardboard boxes. Here’s a newsflash to everyone in Hollywood; you can pick ANY moderately cute animal, make it dance, play a sport, and say some one-liners and kids will be impressed. It really doesn’t take much.

So c’mon Hollywood, stop making penguin movies! We’ve had it with the birds-that-can’t-fly. Let’s move on to another animal. How about a hippopotamus that plays soccer? Or maybe a koala bear that likes to play the piano? Or maybe an ostrich that plays croquet? You see where I’m going with this?