Following the short, peppy Robin Williams riff in the trailer and slotted in a year of computer-generated drivel, Happy Feet looked like a blast of cool penguins dancing to the familiar Williams routine. But Happy Feet is not a happy occasion.

Elijah Wood voices an abnormal penguin named Mumble who can't sing a note among penguins that must sing in order to mate. Mumble struggles to fit into the flock, which has its own problems. The birds, expertly animated especially in terms of movement, are losing their food source (and guess who's to blame). Each penguin has his or her own song to sing and the picture plays like a pop opera with bursts of music.

Parts of the story click and Happy Feet is visually arresting, with cover tunes appealing in a manic, Moulin Rouge! sort of way. Though he cannot sing, Mumble, aided offscreen by tap dancer Savion Glover, can dance.

This tried and true animated plot—think of Rudolph and his nose—would be sufficient for watching Mumble overcome being an outcast in song, dance and comedy, but, no, director George Miller, who did the same thing to the second Mad Max sequel, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, turns it into an overwritten, overproduced extravaganza.

The poorly paced semi-musical slips into the abyss sometime around the time that Mumble strikes out on his own, meeting up with a another flock where singing is less important. Robin Williams voices a number of characters, none of which amount to much, accounting for the usual laugh lines, which do pop up.

Mumble's dad (Hugh Jackman) is an Elvis type who urges his son to try to sing—to fit in—with a cute play on the word triumph. Had this light humor, with catchy songs, streamlined Williams stuff and cashed-in character moments like a line about goose pimples, been smoothed out across the script, it might have delivered what the charming trailer promised.

Instead, Mumble's tale turns into a surrealist fantasy (apparently, that's all the rage) with large chunks of floating abstractions about ecology, religion and, chiefly, collectivism, Happy Feet's favorite theme, which wraps the dumpy, foot-tapper in the idea that being different is acceptable—on the condition that one uses the unique quality to serve others. Scott Holleran