Happy Feet is a film about a dancing baby penguin, and that's all you really need to know. If you like baby penguins then you'll like this film, and if you don't you won't. It's that simple.

Of course, it's not quite that simple because, as the producers are no doubt very well aware, everyone likes baby penguins. That's why there are so many Christmas cards with them on. It's also why there isn't a word for an irrational phobia or dislike of baby penguins. Because everybody likes them. Because they are little fat harmless blobs of cuddliness all wrapped up in soft snorgleable fluff with little helpless stubby wings and adorable little feets! And, ahem, yes. They are generally considered quite pleasing.

The real question is, how much do you like baby penguins? More specifically, do you like penguins more than plots? If you do, you absolutely must watch this film. It has penguins everywhere, many of them babies, some of them tap-dancing. If not, then you're probably better off going to see a different film.

I, however, like penguins a great deal, so I really enjoyed this. And what penguins they are! The animation in this film is really something quite special. It's one of those let's-do-something-which-up-to-now-has-been-impossible films, like Monsters Inc. (the first CGI film to feature a hairy character the big blue stupid one), Ice Age (snow) and Finding Nemo (water). With Happy Feet, it's fluff. Fluff and feathers. And the penguins in it look extraordinarily real, even when they are impersonating Elvis. The Elvis Penguin: file under "Things that really, really should not work, but somehow do."

So the premise of the film is that penguins are actually excellent singers, and each penguin has its own unique Heart Song. A penguin without a Heart Song is hardly a penguin at all. Its most important function is helping the penguin to find a mate (which is actually what happens in the real-life wild; except that in the real-life wild each penguin's unique call sounds more like SKGWAAAAGK! and less like Boogie Wonderland to the uninitiated human ear). Mumbles (voiced by Elijah Wood), is different. He can barely squawk a note, but he does have a precocious and irrepressible talent for tap-dancing. The miserable penguin elders think that tap-dancing is evil and unnatural and causing the Great Gwyn to withhold His seasonal bounty of fish, and kick Mumbles out of the colony. Mumbles has to go and find out what's happening to the fish.

At this point, what little plot there has been up to now completely unravels, but by this point, you really don't care. It's like one of those classic 30s Broadway musicals where the storyline is just there to provide opportunities for really cool song-and-dance numbers. Or, to look at it another way, it's like a traditional Bollywood film where the song-and-dance numbers are the storyline. I hope I'm not giving away too much about the ending when I say that it involves the world being saved by some really really snappy large-scale penguin choreography. It's got a great jukebox soundtrack as well, and it references happy pop from the Beach Boys to Boyz II Men, via some neat jokes for those of us of A Certain Age ("Let's talk about eggs ba-by!"), cool visual gags (look out for the penguin boy-bands) and preposterously adorable rapping chicks.

Apparently, there is a controversy raging over whether Happy Feet contains insidious leftwing propaganda. Well, it doesn't. At least, I didn't see much. It does contain some charismatic adelie amigos (who are somehow Mexican, a nation famous among other things for its distinct lack of penguins, but never mind), and the crazy environmentalist conspiracy theory that overfishing causes there to be, um, less fish, and the miserable control-freak asbo-happy penguin elder bears an uncanny resemblance to about half the current cabinet, doubtless accidentally because it's American after all. But Battleship Potemkin it ain't. The environment is rescued by tapdancing, for goodness's sake!

In short, a happy, festive musical with a boppy soundtrack and joyous levels of animal coolness. But don't go with a talker. Because they'll be all "Why are those penguins Mexican? Why did they let him go? Why is his dad Elvis?" and you'll be all "Because he just is. Now shut up and watch the dancing."