Ah! I only just spotted on the IMDb that this actually came from a novel by Anthony Schaffer which explains a lot … had I known this I might’ve watched it even sooner than I have knowing it features Hayley Mills, albeit in a role so small her opening credit bizarrely reads, “Guest starring …” lol. But hers is one of those roles that, though small in screentime, is felt overwhelmingly at all times. She’s as beautiful a presence here as she has been anywhere – I think for me it all really clicks when it cuts back to her in Forbush’s last monologue, about all living creatures relying in some way or other on others, even (and there it cuts to Mills back at home) humans. It’s such a great moment, her face just sells what could easily be quite a corny message.

Much of the film is footage of the penguins themselves and there’s a sense in which it’s almost part-documentary, the story being fairly thin on the ground and really just being this portrait of man, and quelle man in John Hurt’s performance – Forbush being the kind of guy who won’t go to Antarctica without a few cases of Krug champagne and other fineries, declaring in a radio call that the electric blanket is the last thing he’s missing in the bed department, lol. It’s an amazing performance that goes from surprisingly young and feisty for Hurt through to something bordering on madness and finally despair only to come back full circle, completely changed; the last shot of Hurt returning to Mills is so simple but at the same time absolutely beautiful. It’s definitely a movie I’ll come back to.

Lord in hell. I’ve been hanging on to this one looking for the urge to watch since January and now I know why. Right from the first second, this one is just packed to the gills with bad cheap gag after bad cheap gag. Male-female stereotypes even the most stereotypical of man or woman will find insultingly low. Only a toddler could possibly enjoy these 80 minutes, and the gratuitous bad language quick puts that idea to bed, which leaves only adults with the mind of a toddler. Avoid like the plague – and in fact, I urge you to even physically prevent complete strangers from going near it in the video store – make it your random act of kindness for the day. The songs almost make it worth something, I have to say – but it’s just so damn cheap from the start, there’s really nothing it could do to put things right.

Speaking of jarringly bizarre endings ... the ending to this one actually somehow didn’t spoil the movie for me as much as it has for many. Moulin Rouge, March of the Penguins, An Inconvenient Truth and A.i. might sound like a weird combo – but that’s what Happy Feet is, and it’s even weirder than that. I think it might also be the best movie I’ve seen from 2006. It contains some of the best animation I’ve seen since Finding Nemo, some hilarious lines courtesy of Robin Williams, and made me want to do something about the “whole environment thing” about a million times more than Al Gore’s little lecture did. And I don’t know how it did this – it just reached in and touched my heart and left me wondering how the hell it got in there in the first place. I’ll really have to see it again to make sense of my own response to this wonderful movie. I thought nothing could beat Monster House in the animation genre last year – but this one beats everything back into the water.

Beautifully shot, but what wildlife documentary isn’t these days? This is best seen on the big screen, IMAX if possible. But really it’s no better than the average David Attenborough show, and he does a much better job at narration than Morgan Freeman. It does have some breathtaking moments, but overall, even at only 80 minutes’ length, it somehow outstays its welcome.