Les Aventures de Youbi le pingouin

Hubie (Martin Short) a good hearted but clumsy Adélie penguin with a stutter has a crush on Marina (Annie Golden), a kind soft spoken Penguin. While Hubie does find a perfect pebble to propose with, the cruel alpha male, Drake (Tim Curry), also has his eyes on Marina throws Hubie off a cliff and Hubie becomes lost at sea. When Hubie is captured by humans he teams up with a brash abrasive Northern rockhopper penguin named Rocko (Jim Belushi) who dreams of flying in an effort to return home before Marina is forced to marry Drake.

The final film of Don Bluth Irish based studios that had been the creator's home from 1985 until 1995. The final film in a three picture financing deal with Hong Kong based Media Assets, the movie had a tumultuous development cycle with Warner Bros. Delaying production to focus on Thumbelina and distribution changing hands to MGM who demanded late in production changes to the film. Director's Don Bluth and Gary Goldman jumped ship from the floundering studio in favor of a lucrative deal with 20th Century Fox to set up an Animation Studio, disowning the film which has no credited director, though MGM claimed this was totally Bluth and Goldman's film. With a troubled production history it's no wonder why the movie feels like a disjointed mess, albeit one with fleeting moments of beauty.

The impetus of The Pebble and the Penguin was spurred very much by the success of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, in Bluth's words something for children and "the date movie crowd", that really doesn't come through all that well. While the movie is technically a love story, Hubie and Marina are basically a done deal within the first 10 minutes. Not only are they together, but there's really no defining character to Marina other than she isn't a superficial airhead like her friends are. We know she's nice....and that's it. Marina spends the rest of the movie doing two things: Rejecting Drake and pining for Hubie. Drake is clearly modeled after Gaston with his bodybuilder physique and the ability to make women swoon and faint by entering a room and he's perfectly serviceable as a villain, only elevated by the fact that Tim Curry voices the character and brings energy to what's essentially a very underwritten role. Rocko was probably my favorite character, if only because I found Jim Belushi's abrasive way in which he portrays the character to be a nice break from the alternating bounciness and blandness of the other characters, but even Rocko seems inconsistently written with him changing moods or motivations on a dime for no other reason than the plot needs him to. There's a major revelation wherein Rocko finds out he was lied to by Hubie and his anger lasts all of maybe 30 seconds at most and then it continues the same way with no further mention. And then there's Hubie, on the surface he seems like a decent enough underdog lead, but Martin Short's portrayal of him I found more grating than anything else. Martin Short has a recurring problem in films be it Clifford, Pure Luck and this one in that his delivery just doesn't translate all that well to the movies he's in despite him being a proven funny comedian. Hubie comes off throughout the movie as whiny, obsessive, or emotionally needy and I just didn't find him all that charming.

The animation is at least nice, in parts anyway. The characters are expressive and there's energy to the animation, but there's also some sloppiness that's rather noticeable no doubt due to the production troubles. There are many sequences with odd color coding, static characters in either the foreground or background that give blank stares into space, and even cases of recycling of animation. The movie feels like a hatchet job with a lack of flow and connective tissue between scenes as we jump and skip between sections like a needle hitting record skips. It has the feeling of something where parts were removed while others were being inserted. There's a framework for a serviceable story in place, but the parts used to build it are so haphazardly assembled it lacks emotional impact.

The Pebble and the Penguin is the kind of movie that was made for "too many cooks". It has the feeling of something that was hampered by executive mandate and was put together with the mentality of "just finish it already". Maybe if Warner Bros. Had allowed it to be finished first instead of prioritizing Thumbelina maybe it would've been a better product, but as is: It's a mess of a movie that doesn't know how to assemble all the elements it has into a cohesive whole.

Symbol of the creative -and financial- problems of Don Bluth's team between "All Dogs Go To Heaven" until "Anastasia", this animated movie benefits impeccable score and songs and good animation, for a very weak plot.

By the mid 1990s, the career of animator-director Don Bluth had seemed to drop to its all-time low. Before, Bluth had made a series of popular animated films, many which remain beloved today such as "The Land Before Time" (1988), "The Secret of NIMH" (1982), and "An American Tail" (1986). But beginning with "Thumbelina" in 1994, his films seemed to decrease more and more in quality and popularity and one of the many unfortunate entries is 1995's box office bomb "The Pebble and the Penguin", a film that didn't attract audience members beyond parents and children under the age of seven. Frankly, the latter are the only audience members I can comprehend taking enjoyment out of this rather bland animated feature.

The story is absurd. The film stars a poorly-drawn, stammering, and chubby penguin named Hubie (voiced by Martin Short) who falls in love with a female penguin with a surprisingly healthy flower on her head (voice by Annie Golden). SORT OF like in real life, penguins present their bride-to-bes with a pebble as a substitute for a ring. But when Hubie is swept away by the current, he teams up with a lone rockhopper (James Belushi) with a dream of flying and they race against time to return to Antarctica before it's too late. The reasons why they could be too late is one of many underdeveloped elements of this weak story that would still be weak even if they were there.

It becomes very clear very early on why this animated children's musical does not and will not work for anybody older than say six or seven years of age. It just does not have any of the qualities that are required for a good animated feature. Number one, the film looks bad on account of a very poor drawing style. The animation in this film is very cartoony (even as far as animated films go); it's dark, gloomy, there is no vibrancy in the colors, and on top of that, the design of the film and the elements in it are universally droll and laughable. Take for instance, the penguins who star in the film. With only a few background exceptions, every single penguin looks absolutely nothing at all like a bird. Hubie, for example, looks absurdly ridiculous with wide cheeks, a stubby beak, big eyes, and that preposterous hat that he wears wherever he goes. Combined with his hand-like "flippers" he looks like Chris Farley in a penguin suit. Result: he's an ugly, poorly-drawn cartoon character. But the most absurd-looking and absurdly-designed character is the evil penguin, Drake, who frankly looks nothing at all like a penguin. He's a muscle-man wearing a penguin mask. He's got a chest broader than that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and teeth larger than the teeth of the leopard seals and killer whales that serve as the film's predators. Basically, he's a two-dimensional, recycled villain. He lives in a cave shaped like a skull, he wears a cape, laughs a lot, and gets mad when people laugh with him. Result: who cares? And what's also bad, and maybe worse, is that this is an animated musical and there's not a single noteworthy or memorable song to found anywhere within its running time. The opening hymn was harmless—not memorable, but harmless. But after that, the songs became duller and duller and there was one in particular that had me grimacing all the way through. It's the moment that viewers press the fast-forward button for whenever it comes up.

I felt "The Pebble and the Penguin" was lame all around save for the very few moments when Hubie and the rockhopper penguin Rocko are placed in peril at the jaws of leopard seals and killer whales, who were thankfully, given no dialogue and treated as animals instead of cartoon characters. But in a way, for this reason, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this movie to children. This is the reason. The film displays killer whales are the natural predator of the penguins. My concern is that children familiar with "Free Willy" (1993) may be offended or downhearted by seeing their favorite denizen of the sea portrayed as a bloodthirsty carnivore. The leopard seal was a better antagonist and was more funny seeing as how his jaws opened wider than a rattlesnake's and how he appeared to smile while growling. But the point really is, these moments with the predators—and there are only a few—are the only interesting moments. And they're not enormously interesting, mind you.

Bottom line, I cannot recommend this to anybody below the age of seven. My advice: if you have children around that page, rent it for them. They might enjoy it.

From what I read, Don Bluth was kicked off this movie before it was completed, and it was shipped out and finished by animators in Hungary. (This explains why on the movie itself, there is no director listed.)

This is probably true, because the animation keeps making subtle changes in style, color, and quality - sometimes in the SAME SCENE! Also, the pacing is very choppy, with frequently the characters all of a sudden shown in a new situation with no explanation as to how they got where they were all of a sudden.

Truly awful songs by Barry Manilow, and strident characters who have no depth to them. Not much of a story, either. It's no wonder this movie bombed big time, though I am shocked that Amazon indicates that the movie is out of print!

Looking back at Bluth's previous entries from the 90s, I was beginning to think about what I think about this one. Well, just say that when I was a little kid, I seemed to enjoy it, but as a young adult, I'm gonna call this movie decent. So, some of you are wondering why a 80%? Here's the reason why.

Here are some letdowns.

Letdown #1: The story was just... weird for a movie about penguins despite it's credit for a romance between two main characters. There were some things that were unexplained like "Why do penguins have clothing and hands to begin with?" and "Where did the three non-penguin birds came from?".

and Letdown #2: The songs made by Barry Manilow (despite it's decent music score from Mark Watters) weren't that bad. "Now and Forever" (pop song included), "Sometimes I Wonder" and reprise, which was hear-rendering, and "Don't Make Me Laugh" were enjoyable, but "Good Ship Misery" was badly sung, although "Looks Like I Got Me A Friend" has a decent melody.

That's it for the letdowns. Now for the highlights. The animation is very good, the character designs aren't that bad, and the voice acting is entertaining with the likes of Martin Short, Annie Golden, James Belushi, and Tim Curry. The characters are likable too. Hubie is great and his romance with the beautiful Marina was so sweet and cute altogether. Rocko never fails to amuse me with his comedic moments and his comic-relief voice and the villain named Drake is great and I think that he totally frightened me the first time I saw him as a kid.

So, is this movie weird? Well, kind of, but once you compare it to A Troll In Central Park, it's not a bad movie. It's just a decent and very cute penguin movie and it's worth watching for kids who like decent entertainment.

8/10