Fridae

Sequels tend to have a bad name in certain circles. Like it or not, they're supposed to offer us the same story but with enough differences that we'd still watch them in the cinema. More often than not, they tend to offer not enough difference, resulting in accusations of laziness and audience fatigue.

I'm happy to say that Happy Feet Two is a specimen of a sequel done well. Mumble the misfit and his colony of emperor penguins are back in the sequel and yes, Happy Feet Two puts them in mortal danger again due to climate change when a glacier breaks off Antarctica and locks the seafront colony in on all four sides. And of course, a mixture of tap dancing and human intervention will save the day.

Yet for all the predictability, George Miller keeps the franchise fresh by tweaking the formula and throwing a few left curves along our way. While Erik, son of Mumbles, is a social misfit who doesn't feel like singing or dancing, and while he dreams an impossible dream, his pursuit for individuality, surprisingly enough, doesn't quite lead to the salvation of the penguins (unlike the first Happy Feet film). Neither do the intervention of the humans work out the way you'd expect. Better yet, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt voice an odd couple of krill shrimps whose side quest (to evolve up the food chain!) keep intertwining with the main plot in unexpected and amusing ways. They're like the Skrat character in Ice Age, but with a standup routine that serves as a wry, sideways commentary on the main plot.

Of course, Happy Feet Two does deliver what you'd expect: several well-choreographed song and dance sequences set to pop songs ranging from Pink's R&B Bridge of Light to Europop like Dragostea din tea.

Personally, I consider Happy Feet Two an improvement over its predecessor, just for the fact that it's a sequel that isn't dead predictable and for being an environmentally conscious movie that isn't shrill and overly-educational as the first.