Australian director George Miller is a guy who surely made a change in midstream. After starting out with the apocalyptic Mad Max, he produced the two endearing Babe movies and directed the second one, Babe: Pig in the City. Now he offers emperor penguins that sing and dance like Broadway veterans. In the fantasy world Miller has created, it is most important that penguins be able to sing, for that is how they recognize their mates.

Norma Jean (voiced by Nicole Kidman) and Memphis (Hugh Jackman) are two penguins in love who have an offspring named Mumble (Elijah Wood). As many now know from the incredibly popular March of the Penguins, the male emperor penguin sits on the couple’s egg through the fierce Antarctic winter, while the female goes off to fish. Memphis loses his egg, which rolls downhill before he can rescue it. When Mumble hatches from that egg, he looks normal, but when the time comes, he can’t sing. His voice cracks and screeches, sounding generally horrible. The boy is not without talent, however -- he can dance a sort of penguin tap, and with incredible virtuosity.

The other emperor penguins see Mumble’s ability not as a talent but as an aberration. He is driven out of the community, finds a different species of penguin, and meets up with Ramón (Robin Williams) and his comrades, who think Mumbles’ dancing ability is cool. They become fast friends. Mumbles feels his purpose in life is to find out what has happened to the fish, which used to be plentiful but whose scarcity now threatens to starve all penguins.

The movie is a little spooky at first. The filmmakers use the new motion-capture technique we’ve seen in The Polar Express and Monster House. This time, the penguins -- even their down feathers -- look so real that it’s a bit hard to accept them singing Beach Boys and Queen tunes. But if you stick with it, the idea settles in, and you can relax and just enjoy the fun. And fun the first two thirds of the movie definitely are.

There are some exciting sequences: As the young penguins are learning to swim, they encounter a ravenous seal, which chases them under the ice floes. The "camerawork" here is astounding for an animated movie, with swoops and pans and zooms in and out -- a carryover from Miller’s Road Warrior days.

Up to the point where Mumbles goes off to find the fish, Happy Feet is a four-star movie. But at that point it goes awry and becomes a different film, one with an ecological message that will either go over the heads of youngsters or offend adults by backing them against the wall. Live footage of humans is now included, which makes the motion-capture penguins look even more odd. There is a grand, fully animated musical finale, but it’s too little too late to snap the movie back to center.

All of the voice characterizations are fine, and most of the actors do their own singing without any embarrassing lapses. Elijah Wood as Mumbles, of course, doesn’t have to sing, and the production crew creates his dancing moves. The music is well sung and played, and sounds wonderful on the Dolby Digital multichannel soundtrack.

If you can forgive the ending sequence, there is much to enjoy in Happy Feet; it’s likely that you’ll emerge from the theater thinking more about its pluses than its minuses. The digital animation looks better than most, has a terrific soundtrack, and exciting "camerawork" that makes its chase scenes more exciting than the usual. If it’s not still playing in theaters by the time you read this, it will be on DVD soon; I urge you to give it a try. Perhaps the special features will include an alternate ending.

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