The animation is top-notch, from the water sequences, which are notoriously difficult to render but look fantastic here, to the meticulously scratched and faded "archival footage" of surfing's penguin pioneers. And if you don't care for penguins' anthropomorphized Bambi eyes, or the fact that the penguin chicks look like fuzzy, cuddly Weebles, well, it's Brannon and Buck's movie. The cuteness and ham-flippered triumph-of-the-underdog moralizing dilute what seems to have been conceived as a more melancholic, complex story about the commercialization of the ultimate dropout, nonmaterialist culture, but it's still a cut above the noisy, pop-culture joke-larded norm, and it's much more than a HAPPY FEET knockoff. --Maitland McDonagh
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