No – the title isn’t an Austin Powers reference.
Katy took the children to watch Happy Feet today via the local Home Ed. group and National Schools Film Week. Not the most successful outcome: A had a nasty nappy which Katy had to change in the dark in the cinema(!), J had his fingers over his ears because it was too loud, K found it too scary in places and L found it too scary most, if not all, of the time. The happy family film suggested by the trailers was deceptive – aimed at upper primary / lower secondary to get the themes and humour.
In fact, when I was putting K to bed he told me that there had been the scary parts and he almost started crying again. He said he ought to warn people about his age that it was scary.
Over tea J and K and I had a chat about fishing, and disappearing fish, over-fishing and so on. I said that it was harder to keep fishing boats in the correct places and out of places they shouldn’t be because it’s sea rather than land. On land you can set up barriers etc. K said they could have lasers floating at sea that crush boats, and then a remote control for “the goodies” to turn them off so they could go in. (There’s a house round the corner from us that has a gate with a remote control and the boys have seen it in use.) It would all be powered by wind and waves, but not solar because the lasers would have to run in the night as well as the day and so there wouldn’t be enough sun. Sorted.
Big and Small started watching Star wars ep 1 today and that was too scary too. We’d prewatched it and thought that any problematic parts were at the end, but Small found all the fighting too scary. Dare I ask what was scary in Happy Feet?
When clo watched it she spent most of the film sat on my lap watching it being projected from the back of the auditorium. But did declare she loved it afterwards and did lots of happy feet dances. Shark, propeller and being trapped in the zoo are scary bits from memory.
From what I’ve been told by K and Katy, the scary bits are: the long and nasty chase by the evil-looking seal, being trapped in the zoo and head butting the cage in desperation, and a character who is slowly being garotted by the plastic packaging from a 6 pack as he grows too big for it (at one point this is bitten off by something that is trying to eat him).
I think the volume (loud music with dramatic crescendos and bone-shaking bass as well as shouting voices) and the degree of anthropomorphism also made it scary. For example the leopard seal chasing Mumble was all red mouth, snapping teeth and flashing tail one second and then evil laughing face and vicious eyes with booming angry voice the next – true nightmare material 🙁