Enough With the Penguins Already!

The fluffy forest creatures from "Bambi," if not already on the endangered list for animated fauna, face imminent extinction against the recent computer-generated stampede of wildlife wisenheimers. Of course, this techno-zoo can’t compare to the hand-drawn menagerie of smart alecks unleashed by the Looney Tunesters at Warner Brothers in the 1930s and ‘40s.

In the new Noah’s Ark of computer-animated animals endlessly parading across theater screens and DVD shelves - from the frigid Ice Age to tropical Madagascar, from the barnyard to the wild or just over the hedge - one feathered, flightless figure emerges as the favorite go-to character for the "cute factor": the penguin, dubbed by one critic as the "new Bambi."

Europeans who first saw penguins thought they were a kind of fish. Polar explorers initially regarded them as either a biological curiosity or a harmless diversion, as documented in rare footage filmed at Robert Scott’s hut in Antarctica in 1911. In 1928, Admiral Richard Byrd’s crew was filmed herding the bewildered birds with sled dogs and teasing them with hand puppets.

Scotland’s Edinburgh Zoo earned early renown for its penguins. In rare cooperation between hunters and preservationists, the first six penguins arrived in 1914 by arrangement with a whaling company. The whalers continued to provide the zoo with a seemingly endless quantity of penguins, which surprisingly thrived in the Scottish climate. Story has it that in 1950 a keeper accidentally left open a gate to the penguin pool and inadvertently led a parade of the birds over the grounds, inaugurating the zoo’s amusing annual "Penguin Parade."

Nearly a century ago, Australian cameraman Frank Hurley filmed Sir Ernest Shackleton’s doomed 1914 expedition to the South Pole that ended with the loss of the ship "H.M.S. Endurance." The footage became the 1919 documentary "South," which was restored and re-released in 2000. Hurley’s photography featured, as subtitled, "quaint birds and beasts," including, of course, penguins.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a surviving member of Robert Scott’s ill-fated 1911 race to the South Pole that resulted in the deaths of Scott and four of his companions, was one of the first to remark on the innate comedic attraction of penguins. "They are extraordinary like children, these little people of the Antarctic world," he recounted in his book The Worst Journey in the World, "either like children or like old men, full of their own importance and late for dinner, in their black tail-coats and white shirt-fronts - and rather portly withal."

It was inevitable that early Hollywood animators would take advantage of these curious creatures. At the onset some cartoonists transplanted the penguin to the North Pole, while we all (better) know that the birds are exclusive to the Southern Hemisphere, including seven of the 17 species that call Antarctica home.

Walt Disney and his crew of animators started exploiting the penguin in the early 1930s in a pair of "Silly Symphony" shorts, "Arctic Antics" and "Peculiar Penguins." The 1938 cartoon "Polar Trappers" featured Goofy trying to hunt a walrus while Donald Duck attempts a Pied Piper ploy to trap a colony of penguins. (Any question of why a duck would want to eat a penguin is best left unasked.)

Donald Duck found himself the frustrated owner of a pet penguin sent by Admiral Byrd in "Donald’s Penguin" (1939). Sterling Holloway, a Disney favorite as the original voice of Winnie the Pooh, narrated "The Cold-Blooded Penguin" (1945), the tale of Pablo, a penguin who dreams of moving to a warmer climate.

Over at the "Termite Terrace" - what the staff of artists in the animation department at Warner Brothers called their workshop - the legendary Tex Avery made "The Penguin Parade" in 1938, depicting an evening at a night club for penguins. The cartoon included an appearance by a penguin caricature of Bing Crosby, who allegedly was not amused and talked about a lawsuit. The songs featured in the short were written by Byron Gay, himself a member of Admiral Byrd’s 1933 expedition.

Chuck Jones, undoubtedly the most beloved of the Warner Bros. animators, created a couple of popular cartoons pairing Bugs Bunny with a misplaced, adorable, doe-eyed, penguin, probably best remembered for its tears that turn into ice cubes. "Frigid Hare" (1949) was banned from TV showings for several years because of its stereotypical portrayal of an Inuit hunter and when Bugs calls him a "big baboon" and an "Eskimo pie-head." In 2003, the short was released uncut as part of a DVD set. In "8-Ball Bunny" (1950), Bugs and the lost bird, now copyrighted as "Playboy Penguin," keep running into an animated incarnation of Humphrey Bogart from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

Chilly Willy was the name of a cute, little penguin created by animator Paul J. Smith for the Walter Lantz Studio. The anthropomorphic bird appeared in over 100 theatrical short subjects from 1953 to 1972 (remaining mute until the early ‘60s when Daws Butler, voice actor extraordinaire for the Hanna-Barbera company, finally gave the penguin a voice, not unlike Elroy Jenson from "The Jensons"). Chilly Willy became the second most popular character from the Walter Lantz/Universal Studio, behind Woody Woodpecker. Most of his misadventures involved attempts to find food or stay warm while at frequent odds with a dog named Smedley. Two of the more notable cartoons, "I’m Cold" (1955) and the Oscar-nominated "The Legend of Rockabye Point" (1955), were among the final shorts directed by Tex Avery, who ended his career at the Lantz studio. Chilly Willy was revived for newly produced cartoons in 1999 in Fox TV’s "The New Woody Woodpecker Show."

Walt Disney, two years before his death, tapped one last time into the crowd-pleasing appeal of penguins in "Mary Poppins" (1964) with the musical "Jolly Holiday" sequence which featured - almost a quarter of a century before "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" - a surprising blend of live-action and animation as Dick Van Dyke shared a soft-shoe dance routine with four penguin waiters at an outdoor café.

In 1991, Berkeley Breathed, the newspaper cartoonist responsible for "Bloom County" and its follow-up "Outland," created a children’s book entitled "A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story," featuring Opus the penguin, depressed because he yearns to soar in the air like other birds. The story was turned into an animated television special that same year, with Steven Spielberg as one of the executive producers. Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman took a break from shooting "Hook" for Spielberg to provide guest voices as, respectively, "The Kiwi" and "The Cockroach." When asked by a fan where a VHS or DVD copy could be found, Breathed, who didn’t hide his dislike for the production, reportedly replied, "Hopefully in the rubbish pail… but I’m glad you enjoyed it. I presume your family was on speed when they watched it. I would imagine it helps."

"Avenger Penguins," a short-lived 1993-1994 animation series about three motorcycling penguins who fight a mad scientist, came from the same British company that produced "Danger Mouse" and "Count Duckula." "3-2-1 Penguins!" was a series of animated Christian-inspired shorts produced from 2001 to 2003 by the makers of the religious Veggietales animated adventures.

Don Bluth, a self-imposed exile from the post-Walt Disney studio of animators, achieved early independent success in the late 1980s with the features "An American Tail" and "The Land Before Time," followed by a string of increasingly forgettable fare, including "RockA-Doodle" and "A Troll in Central Park." "The Pebble and the Penguin" (1995) was a particularly mediocre work of icy detachment from Bluth and his company. Something to do with a schlemiel of a rockhopper penguin (Martin Short) who hooks up with a slob of a sidekick (James Belushi) to win the love of the lady bird of his dreams, while fending off an evil penguin (Tim Curry), the soggy effort is further dampened by a series of Barry Manilow songs.

"Winged Migration," the surprising, commercially successful documentary of 2002, devoted a sequence to the flightless but fittingly named rockhopper penguins. In 2005 came the wildly popular documentary "March of the Penguins." This is the film, according to New York Times critic Jeannette Catsoulis, that "persuaded Hollywood that penguins are the new Bambis," and we have since "endured singing, wisecracking and even tap-dancing versions."

The dawn of computer-animated penguins opened with "Madagascar" in 2005. Made with an obvious nostalgia for the golden age of Looney Tunes, the tale of Central Park Zoo refugees marooned on the island of the title is a pleasant parable of friendship, remarkable for its simplicity and lack of fart jokes. The origin of the movie was supposed to be a parody of "A Hard Day’s Night" with penguins entitled "Rockumentary." The directing duo of Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath recognized the comic potential of the birds ("They’re just funny," Darnell noted, "they’re natural comedians") and transformed the penguins from rock musicians to steely-eyed World War II-type POW’s who hijack a cargo ship in their attempt to escape to Antarctica and steal several scenes in the process. The feathered foursome became so popular that they deserved their own holiday short later that year, "The Madagascar Penguins in: A Christmas Caper."

Disney’s "The Wild" (2006) was universally dissed as an uninspired rip-off of "Madagascar," right down to the plot point of a lion leading three animal friends in the escape from a New York City zoo (the Bronx Zoo this time, instead of Central Park). Penguins make a perfunctory appearance in a throwaway sequence about an after-hours turtle-curling competition between the birds and other zoo denizens. The movie seemed more wrapped up in technology than heart. Does the viewer really care that Samson the lion had more than six million hairs individually created and animated by computer?

Audiences showed they cared about the tap-dancing feats of an animated emperor penguin in 2006’s "Happy Feet." It’s hard to believe that such winning family fare came from the same director who gave us the testosterone-fueled blood-and-sand trilogy of "Mad Max" films, but George Miller also made the endearing porcine fantasy "Babe." "Happy Feet," starring the voice talents of Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, and Nicole Kidman, featured an eco-friendly plot a few found too politically preachy, which didn’t prevent the film from winning the Oscar for the year’s best animated feature.

What is not hard to believe is that alleged comedian Bob Saget, who honestly thought his caffeine-jagged, non-stop voice-overs on "America’s Funniest Home Videos" were worthy of a feature-length film, would be inspired to create a parody of "March of the Penguins," entitled "Farce of the Penguins." Saget mercifully hired a who’s who of standup comedians and comic actors to provide the fart jokes, dick jokes, gay jokes and poop jokes for natural film footage of the birds. The sole flash of ingenuity in the one-joke, 60-minutes-too-long direct-to-DVD rental is the inspired replacement of the soothing tones of original narrator Morgan Freeman with the snake-bite delivery of Samuel L. Jackson.

The usual practice in the production of animated movies is to have the actors record lines singly. Afterward all the voice tracks are edited together. When it came to the making of this year’s "Surf’s Up," however, the directors decided to go against the current and had the cast - including Shia LaBeouf, Jeff Bridges, Zooey Deschanel, and Jon Heder - do their dialogue together in the sound booth, resulting in realistically spontaneous exchanges between the actors.

The author’s message in "Surf’s Up," presented as a mock sports documentary about surfing penguins, is, of course, that winning isn’t everything. Producer Christopher Jenkins told reporters, "Four and a half years ago, I didn’t know about ‘March of the Penguins.’ I certainly didn’t know about ‘Happy Feet.’ If we had, we may have done skateboarding squirrels." When asked if depicting penguins on surfboards was difficult, co-director Ash Brannon replied in the affirmative, adding, "Penguins have no knees!"

God forbid if squirrels on skateboards ever become a box office hit. In the meantime, Lauren DuBois, assistant curator of birds at Sea World’s Penguin Encounter in San Diego believes films like "Surf’s Up," "Happy Feet" and "March of the Penguins" have educated audiences. "The more we learn," she told the Los Angeles Times, "the more we can pass on to our children." The kids who see the movies, as well, pass on the information to their parents, who, according to DuBois, then "become more aware of things that are going on in the environment."

And besides, as Apsley Cherry-Garrard recognized nearly a century ago, penguins are natural comedians. They are popular, DuBois noted, because "they are not like what you would expect a bird to look like. And they do have personalities. I think that is what draws people."

That being said, what of the future of penguins in movies? The filmmakers behind "Madagascar" are working on a sequel subtitled "The Crate Escape," but there is no word as yet about the return of the cunning penguin commandos. Mercifully, no one is planning any animated escapades based on recent news accounts of gay penguins.

Enough with the penguins already! Speaking from a personal bias, I would like to see baby harp seals enjoy their moment in the spotlight as the next Bambi.