'Happy Feet Two' strictly for the birds

An animated jukebox musical that grafted "Billy Elliot" onto a Disney nature film, the 2006 hit "Happy Feet" told the story of Mumble, a penguin who is ostracized for his inability to sing Top 40 tunes but heroically uses his tap-dancing skills to change Antarctic fishery quotas. It was a piece of nonsensical kitsch, like those paintings of dogs playing poker, but there's no accounting for taste: "Happy Feet" wound up earning nearly $200 million and an Oscar for best animated feature.

The sequel, "Happy Feet Two," lacks what little novelty and charm made the original tolerable. Loud, chaotic and assaultively ugly, its suggests that returning writer-director George Miller ("The Road Warrior") was as baffled as anyone by the first film's success.

The familiar rehashings (ho-hum, another environmental crisis) feel almost welcome compared to the grotesque new characters. Sven (Hank Azaria) is a foreign bird who blows 3-D snot bubbles through a wound in his beak; Bryan, a gruff elephant seal (Richard Carter), comes off like a nasty bar brawler; Matt Damon and Brad Pitt riff nicely together as two hapless krill, but their enormous, semihuman eyes convey mostly terror.

Driven largely by scares rather than laughs, "Happy Feet Two" seems unlikely to capture imaginations the way the original did. It may even drive this franchise to extinction.