Word: millers
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...Here the Australian director could be describing his own uncanny ability to master the minutiae of moviemaking while never losing sight of the bigger picture-even if it's a picture that no one's envisaged before. With unerring prescience, Miller has zoomed Australian cinema out of a costume-drama past and into a cutting-edge future (Mad Max); beamed through the freckles and frizzy hair of a gawky Sydneysider to find the screen goddess within Nicole Kidman (as producer of Flirting and Dead Calm); and spliced live action with animatronics and CGI as creator of the beloved Babe franchise...
...describes as "a big cuddly bear with a brain the size of a planet," usually gives audiences and filmmaking rivals a five-year head start-the typical time it takes to get his notoriously painstaking projects (including his ongoing Sydney house renovations) off the ground. So in 2003, when Miller announced that following the stalling of his fourth Mad Max film, in part because of the war in Iraq, his next project would be an animated penguin musical, to be made in Australia with a production house relatively new to the game, Pixar must have rubbed its hands with glee...
...days of the Road Runner and Pep? Le Pew, just after World War II. Perhaps not coincidentally, artist Chuck Jones was a particular favorite of the young George Miliotis, growing up the son of Greek immigrants in the town of Chinchilla, Queensland. But when it came time for Miller to concoct his first purely animated feature half a century later, the greatest inspiration came not from Warner Bros. but from wildlife documentaries. Tickled by the fact that Antarctica's emperor penguins distinguish their mates by the unique call of their "heartsong," Miller conceived a cartoon musical. But as always...
...despite the pyrotechnics, for Miller story is all. Ever since he sent Mel Gibson's disillusioned police officer Max Rockatansky down a Geelong highway in 1978, the former emergency-room doctor has claimed the mythological writings of Joseph Campbell as his cinematic touchstone. "The composite hero of the monomyth is a personage of exceptional gifts," wrote Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. "Frequently he is honored by his society, frequently unrecognized or disdained." From misfit Max, to a piglet who thinks he's a sheep, and a penguin who can't express himself through song, only dance...
...Also usually at play is a mixture of calm intelligence and charm-the winning bedside manner of this cinematic Dr. Feelgood. "Was there no place where a penguin without a heartsong could truly belong?" asks Happy Feet's narrator at one point. This being a George Miller movie, the answer is an entertainingly entangled double negative-together with a family-friendly environmental message as light on its feet as the dance work. "You can see that element of the healer in all of George's works," insists Szubanski. "And I think that's partly why he's drawn...