Most critics like Happy Feet, and none dismiss it. The praise gathers around the look of the thing: the computer-animated Antarctic, which several reviews find convincing enough to carry weight, and the tap-dancing set pieces, which nearly every critic picks out. The camerawork draws particular notice, with Variety singling out Miller’s elegant camera movement and expansive sense of space. A good number also credit the film with more ambition than the average children’s cartoon, reading its outsider penguin as a story about identity, scapegoating and the environment.
The reservations are about tone and message rather than craft. Empire finds the late shift into darker material disconcerting, and Digital Spy thinks the environmental argument grows heavy-handed and the ending lets the film down. Variety calls the story conventional and some song choices tiresome; The Guardian says it starts poorly before improving. The spread runs from the warm to the merely satisfied, roughly 60 to 90, with no outright hostility.