George Miller’s 2006 film, Happy Feet, was a fun, original and wonderfully off-the-wall animation with a very powerful message alongside its infectious mixture of rhythm and wit. With DreamWorks producing a fantastic sequel in the form of Kung Fu Panda 2 earlier this year, hopes were high that Warner Bros. would deliver something different and exciting to contend with Fox in Happy Feet Two.

Following on from the first film, we are already acquainted with Mumble (Elijah Wood), Gloria (Pink) and their new and very cute bundle of fun, Erik (Ava Acres) and it appears Mumble’s lack of singing ability has been transferred into Erik’s lack of dancing talent. However when Erik’s true gift is unveiled it is as surprising as it is delightful and a great little moment within the film – dads, you may need some tissues at hand. Although returning as both Ramon and Lovelace, Robin Williams feels oddly lacking from this sequel, feeling more scripted than we’re used to and taking a backseat to the vast amount of other characters taking up screen time.

New addition Hank Azaria is once again on incredible form as The Mighty Sven, the ‘fake’ penguin who little Erik aspires to after watching him fly. Another accent perfected, Azaria brings a lot of light-hearted comedy to the sequel, but isn’t particularly key to the main story, serving much more of a moral purpose. Definitely involved in the main events are Seymour (Common) and his rapping son, Atticus (Benjamin Flores Jr.), who remain upbeat throughout and save the middle third from being entirely bereft of penguin humour, Atticus being a great deal of fun to watch as the self-assured, freestyling, fluffy ball of attitude.

Courtesy of Brad Pitt and Matt Damon – one of Hollywood’s less likely double acts – Will and Bill the Krill completely steal the show. Although they don’t have a great deal to do with the film’s main narrative, Pitt is in his absolute element as the delusional Will, a Krill going through an identity crisis, with Damon’s play-it-safe Bill his trusty and loyal companion. The duo take part in some of the film’s best set pieces, with the 3D at its most effective (and it is extremely impressive throughout) and sheer craziness at its peak. Whether watching the Krill being chased through the entire food chain, skua attacks or dance sequences, it’s impossible not to smile and be completely lost amongst the jellyfish and beautiful Northern Lights when the film is at its most comfortable and best.

Unlike the previous film, the environmental connotations are spread throughout rather than in one big helping, with the penguins taking matters into their own flippers much more this time around. This has resulted in a film that is far darker in tone, its final third doused in negativity and not quite knowing what to do with itself. Handy, then, that Pink is involved this time and appears to have been utilised for her singing talents far more than her acting, leaving Brittany Murphy desperately missed and Gloria sidelined. Although morally fitting, her full-length song in this middle third slows the pace even further and is at times slightly uncomfortable.

The songs themselves are not utilised as well as the first film where we followed each penguin trying to find their own ‘Heartsong’, but there are some great little surprises and the sheer power and sense of triumph and togetherness ‘Under Pressure’ brings towards the film’s close is as spine tingling as it is impressive. Ultimately a film about coming together, this is reflected in how Miller has tried to give everyone an equal say, leading to too much ‘alien’ interaction. Where the initial sighting of a human in Happy Feet was actually quite shocking, here they end up feeling gimmicky and borderline annoying, eradicating any initial sense of fascination and mystery.

When it’s good, Happy Feet Two is pure, delirious entertainment, but away from the near-perfect set pieces, the film seems confused as to quite which storyline to focus on. Whilst the animation is once again impossible to fault, and although it is just as wonderfully bonkers as the first, it just doesn’t feel as fresh. The original is ultimately so much cooler.

***~~ (3/5)

Earlier in the week, you’ll have seen interviews with both Robin Williams and Elijah Wood on their new movie. Happy Feet Two. With Elijah, we couldn’t help but talk about The Hobbit and if you missed it, you can catch up here and with Robin here. Likewise, in this interview with Director,George Miller, we couldn’t help but ask him about returning to Fury Road in the new Mad Max movie that will see Tom Hardy taking on the lead role.

Happy Feet Two is released in the UK this Friday, 2nd December and you can see our review here.

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HeyUGuys – Coming from Mad Max and Mad Max 2 which were very cynical and very dark movies about the future to Happy Feet 2 which is very optimistic, do you think you are more optimistic with age?

George – Probably, even though I’m now making another Mad Max film after all these years. People ask why did I get into these [Happy Feet] movies and I say two reasons: kids and technology. Once I had kids I only got to see kids movies and you do a lot of reading books to them and then I’m lucky enough to be in the era when this technology started. With the first Babe film we had a script written for ten years before, waiting for the ability to make real pigs talk and CG came along and I always loved animation, one of my top movies in Pinocchio and I always said that Chuck Jones and Buster Keaton taught me how to make Mad Max because they were pure filmmakers and they understood the pure syntax of filmmaking. So, it seemed natural to get into these stories.

Was it easy to find another story for the second Happy Feet film?

In this case it was easy because the films take a long time and in the last year of Happy Feet 1 the characters were so much in my head, they were like imaginary friends and I had the story for the sequel while I was finishing the first one. I had the story but I decided to do two other films in the meantime. One was Justice League which was closing to finishing but due to some complicated rebate system which was just starting in Australia it fell down. And then I was to do the next Mad Max movie, Fury Road, which I’ve tried to do twice and we had unprecedented rain in the centre of Australia and what was the red, flat plain is now a flower garden and the great salt lakes in the centre which you could drive through for miles is full of pelicans and fish so that film was pushed back. So then came Happy Feet [2] but we hope to shoot [Fury Road] in Namibia next year.

Will Fury Road be closer to Mad Max 2 than Mad Max 3?

It’s not a reinvention, but it’s going back into the world and this is many years later now. It’s not following any chronology at all. I love that world because it reduces human behaviour to a very elemental state. In that very spare landscape, a little bit like Happy Feet, you’ve got Antarctica and that has the same sort of quality. We’ve got Tom Hardy played Mad Max, who is a wonderful actor and Charlize Theron. I never wanted to make another film, but the story got me. And I kept pushing it away and the story just kept on playing in my head. It probably means I’m crazy.

Will Mel Gibson be returning for a cameo?

No, no. We’ve talked about the film and even doing it in 2001 and then it’s not like The Unforgiven, you know – about an older man going back to past.

So, when will shooting start on that?

Middle of next year. We’ve already got all our vehicles built and being shipped out to Namibia.

Do you think Happy Feet will become a franchise?

Honestly it depends entirely on if there’s another story. It was interesting that at the end of the first film I had the story for the sequel and then I got more into the world. Happy Feet 1 happens over the lifetime from birth to young adulthood of Mumble so we needed to get an epic scale by seeing the Penguin world from a microscopic vantage, from the very large creatures like Elephant Seals all the way down…

When casting the Krill did you find the most famous actors with children?

Not exactly! You came from wanting friends, actors who knew each other because they play friends who have known each other their whole lives and I knew Brad [Pitt] somewhat and I talked to him, but you’re right I know Matt [Damon] said ‘I didn’t even read the screenplay, my kids just said Do the film!’ But you know Babe started with my daughter, reading stories… and the first movies you go to are the kids movies when you have kids.

Did you ever think of becoming a doctor?

I did, I have a twin brother who is a doctor and I went to medical school and practised in hospitals for about four years and then when I started making films there was no opportunity to be a filmmaker but we started making, in the Seventies, little short films and I got very curious about the process and then somewhere in the mid-Seventies I was working as a doctor on the weekends and making short films during the week. We won a couple of awards and I said ‘Let’s make a feature’ so I learned how to write and Mad Max was the first film I made. And I then I always tended to go back, I was registered as a doctor and in Australia when you’re doing stunts on set you need to have a registered doctor on hand…

You mentioned you were interested in technology, would you be interested in doing a movie with motion capture performances?

Well, Happy Feet is partly done with motion capture. When Mumble was danced by Savion Glover, who is the greatest living tap-dancer and one of the big triggers on Happy Feet 1 was not only seeing documentaries about the lives of penguins which was very striking to me – the way they survive by community and that they were very anthropomorphic – and Andrew Lesnie who shot the first Babe movie and the first Lord of the Rings showed me the first motion capture for Gollum and I thought – Ah! we can make the penguins dance! So, that was a very big moment for Happy Feet 1. But though you have the motion capture you don’t have the facial capture right so all the faces are animated and the Krill, because they have five legs, and the seals are all animated. But the dancing bipedal characters are all motion capture.

When you were writing the second film was there anything you wrote that wasn’t possible at the time, but in the three years since was made possible?

Yes, I never thought we could get the crystals of ice, but it’s all ones and zeroes, and the cameras are real world cameras, though I like the virtual cameras and you can go up high, I like the camera low, and shooting on the Z-Axis and go in out out of the screen, which is great for 3D. Things like the transparency of the Krill and the bioluminescence we didn’t think we could do. So, a lot of it pushed the boundaries as we were going along.

Happy Feet Two is also a musical, how do find getting the rights to the songs ?

Getting the rights is difficult depending on who you are working with, the more people there are the harder it is…

There were quite a few Queen songs…

Yeah, the good thing about the Queen songs is that they are very operatic and they have a great structure, particularly Under Pressure, and I didn’t have that song initially but when we were recording the voices Hank Azaria asked me if I’d heard it and it was as i they’d written it for us. The hardest thing we had was when we tried to get a Phil Spector song just as he was charged with murder, so it was a little difficult to get access to him… I love the Puccini aria, I love its volcanic aspect and how emotions are expressed. Then we needed a song in the middle when the mother who couldn’t be with her son has to be soothed and Pink wrote that song.

Last week I got to sit down with Elijah Wood to chat about his new movie, Happy Feet Two. It so happened that the first question asked at the round table lead nicely into The Hobbit so this interview starts with a lot of Hobbit information on filming and what we can expect but mainly what Elijah felt when he returned to the set. He was such a nice bloke and I could have spoken with him for hours. I wanted to get more information from him about his memories from Back to the Future Part II but that will have to wait for another day!

Elijah plays Mumbles in Happy Feet Two which hits UK cinemas this Friday, 2nd December. If you missed the interview with Robin Williams, you can catch up here. Tomorrow we’ll have an interview with Director George Miller so keep your eyes peeled for that.

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HeyUGuys: Should you be in New Zealand at the moment?

Elijah Wood: I’ve just gotten back and I’m all finished. I was there for about a month throughout October.

How was it to be back?

Amazing, a mix of emotions I think. It was slightly surreal and felt oddly normal. I played the character for so long and I was in the costume, in Bag-end and a lot of the same crew were there from Rings so it was as if no time had past and suddenly we were doing another scene. It was great, felt like a family reunion, like stepping back in time.

When you wrapped on The Lord of the Rings, did you ever think you’d be going back?

At that time, if you;d have asked me if there would be a Hobbit film, I would have said no. Peter (Jackson) was pretty adamant about not doing it. There was always talk that someone else would do it but since Frodo isn’t in The Hobbit, i never thought I would play Frodo again.

If you were filming for a month, is it quite a big part?

It’s a flash-forward and there’s actually not a lot. It’s relatively small but it’s a nice piece and works really beautifully with what they’re doing. It’s going to be really cool I think.

What’s changed since you left?

Well, there are thirteen dwarves! Imagine that, thirteen principal actors, it’s insane – all with prosthetics and it’s incredible. In some ways, the scale feels larger surprisingly even though technically the scale of Lord of the Ring is more massive in terms of the storytelling. There’s more technology, it’s being shot in 3D, more people on the set and it feels as though the ‘machine’ is bigger. But, at the heart of it all, there is that same New Zealand ingenuity, that same vibe on set, Peter’s super relaxed, it’s still really fun – it’s great. It’s a mixture of old family and new family.

Was it strange for you going back to what was your set and now you’re a guest on it?

It was funny but it was cool. I was just excited to meet everybody, to meet Martin Freeman who’s playing Bilbo. And then also to catch up with McKellen and Andy Serkis who’s also directing second unit. It was fun to meet everybody and for me, what was fun was getting the chance to meet everybody and ask them a million questions asking them “how it’s been”, “how was the rehearsal period” and knowing what their experience must be like, it was fun for me to get a sense of what their perspective was on it.

Bringing it back to Happy Feet, what do you think are the main messages from the movie?

I think there are some beautiful themes. The movie ends on this note of everyone has to work together in communities across communities to solve a massive problem. And the idea that Eric, like Mumble in the first one is also searching for identity and looking for something that defines him. I love the idea of a kid believing in something that’s impossible, believing that he can fly. And that tough decision that a parent has to deal with where they dont want to crush their child’s dreams but they still want them to believe that things are possible. And the notion that it’s our differences that make us unique.

Eric has a rather embarrassing moment in the movie – have you had any embarrassing moments that you want to share?

I, like Eric in the movie, have weed on myself actually! Twice in my life. I was five years old at a family gathering at a holiday party and I was too embarrassed to ask to use the loo so I peed myself! And then again in first grade, I was again afraid to ask and by the time I did ask, I stood up and peed in class! And was wearing overalls!

Robin (Williams) mentioned in his interview the image of the polar bear clinging to the small bit of ice, are you pessimistic about the future?

I think that people are inherently good and will want to change the future for the better. In terms of the environment, I’m not a scientist so my knowledge is limited. I think the planet is going to change and we’re going to have to adapt. I feel that there is an awareness now that is at its peak. People are more aware of what part they have to play in it than ever before and that’s great. Everything else is out of our control.

But you’ve been to the future in Back to the Future 2 playing Wild Gunman so you can tell us what happens?…..

I have, that’s true! And weren’t they playing Jaws 32?!

Jaws 19!

Jaws 19, man, that was fun!

Do you have a favourite film from when you were younger?

As a film, I love Avalon. That’s one of my favourites. And I think Barry Levinson is an amazing filmmaker and it’s one of my favourite movies of his. It’s a beautiful movie.

Do you remember filming it?

Yeah, I do. I have vivid memories. In fact, to take it back to Happy Feet, I met Robin Williams on the set of Avalon. I was eight years old and Robin had worked with Barry on Good Morning Vietnam and he came to visit the set in Baltimore and it was really dark outside and I couldn’t see. There was this man standing there and he introduced himself to me and said ‘Hi, I’m Robin and this is my daughter Zelda’ and he had baby Zelda in his arms. Insane! And I was shaking his hand and in mid-shake I realised who he was and I said ‘Robin….. WILLIAMS! and he said ‘Ahh, light goes on!’ and it freaks me out. He was one of the first celebrities that I met. I reminded him of it the other day!

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Following on from the astounding success of 2006’s Happy Feet, the upcoming sequel, Happy Feet 2, is set to make a big impact (I could’ve said ‘splash’, but chose not to) when it comes out in a few weeks, and this fantastic new trailer, courtesy of Yahoo Movies, gives us a lot to look forward to in it.

Not only did the first film do really well at the box office, taking more than $300m. from a $100m. budget, it also took the Academy Award for Best Animated Film, so in some respects, Happy Feet 2 has a lot to live up to.

Cast in a different light though, sequels are typically expected not to live up to their originals, so hopefully Happy Feet 2 will buck the trend and be a pleasant surprise!

Co-director from the first film, George Miller, is back in the director’s chair this time around but is their all by himself, and it looks like he’s done a great job from what we’ve seen so far – all of which you can catch up on here.

The sequel will see the return of many of the great actors and actresses who lent their voices to the first film, including Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, and Hugo Weaving, along with some terrific additions that see the likes of Brad Pitt and Matt Damon joining the cast in the forms of Will and Bill the Krill, Sofía Vergara as Carmen, Anthony LaPaglia as Boss Skua, and Hank Azaria as The Mighty Sven.

Sadly, the late Brittany Murphy died from pneumonia before being able to reprise her role from the first film as Gloria, Mumble’s love interest, and so Alicia Moore (a.k.a. Pink/P!nk) will be lending her voice as Gloria for the second film.

Happy Feet 2 is coming out in the States this weekend (and so will be up against Twilight! Which must be a bit daunting, even if the target demographics are different), and this is the final American trailer we’ll be getting. Since we here in the UK have to wait until the 2nd December to see it, there’s a chance we’ll have more Happy Feet 2 goodness to bring you between now and then.

The film is one of the eighteen animated features that have been submitted as potential Oscar candidates for the 2012 Academy Awards next February, and we’ll know in just over two months’ time whether it’s made the final nominees list as its predecessor did a few years back. Without further ado though, here’s the brilliant new trailer to feast your eyes on. As you can imagine, it’s super green band, so if you’re at work, feel free to inject a little bit of a song and dance into the airwaves with the weekend being so close. Enjoy.

5 years after their first movie, Happy Feet, Warner Bros. have released the first trailer for the follow-up sequel, Happy Feet 2. Happy Feet 2 is written and  directed by George Miller and features a voice cast which includes Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Hank Azaria, Alecia Moore (Pink),  and Sofia Vergara. The obvious person missing from the line-up is Brittany Murphy who tragically died last year.

Synopsis: The sequel to the Academy Award(R) winning animated smash hit, “Happy Feet Two” returns audiences to the magnificent landscape of Antarctica in superb 3D. Mumble, The Master of Tap, has a problem because his tiny son Erik is choreo-phobic. Reluctant to dance, Erik runs away and encounters The Mighty Sven – a penguin who can fly!! Mumble has no hope of competing with this charismatic new role model. But things get worse when the world is shaken by powerful forces. Erik learns of his father’s ‘guts and grit’ as Mumble brings together the penguin nations and all manner of fabulous creatures – from tiny Krill to giant Elephant Seals – to put things right.

Unfortunately the poster is lying to its UK audience and we can expect to see the movie hit UK shores 2nd December this year in 3d. Guess they will have to change it to Decembuuuur!

Source: Apple

Shocking new this evening from TMZ who are reporting that Britanny Murphy who shot to fame for movies like Sin City, The Wrestler and Just Married died this morning from cardiac arrest.

TMZ bring us this:

A 911 call was made at 8:00 AM from a home in Los Angeles that is listed as belonging to her husband, Simon Monjack, the Los Angeles City Fire Department tells TMZ.

We’re told Murphy was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

Sources tell TMZ Brittany Murphy’s mom discovered her unconscious in the shower. We’re told when paramedics arrived, they quickly determined Murphy was in full cardiac arrest and immediately administered CPR. They continued CPR in route to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center — several miles away — and Murphy was unresponsive. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Our thoughts go out to Murphy’s friends and family at this tragic time and we’ll bring you more info as we get it.

ComingSoon.net have managed to ‘acquire’ some promotional footage from Sylvester Stallone’s new movie, The Expendables which is out summer 2010. The movie is both written and directed by Stallone as well as him playing the lead. It also stars Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Eric Roberts, Dolph Lundgren, Charisma Carpenter, Giselle Itie, Brittany Murphy, David Zayas and Amin Joseph.

The film follows a team of mercenaries on a mission to overthrow a South American dictator. Which I think basically gives them an excuse to blow up as much as they possibly can! AWESOME!

I’m not sure how official this footage is so it may well get taken down but enjoy it while it lasts!