Having Elijah Wood, Matt Damon, Common, Robin Williams, Pink, and Brad Pitt together in a room would be enough to make most star-struck. Combining the talents of these critically-acclaimed celebrities in a film would seemingly drive flocks of moviegoers to the box office with great expectation.

Oddly enough, such expectation was generated by the recent release of Happy Feet Two, a movie directed by George Miller about dancing penguins. And the hype was well-merited; the first Happy Feet, released in 2006, grossed $384 million worldwide and won the Oscar for “Best Animated Film.”

Yet in reality, Happy Feet Two was totally undeserving of its inherited grandeur. Despite earning over 21 million dollars its opening weekend, the movie turned out to be exactly what it sounded like; an unsophisticated portrayal of dancing penguins.

The film starts out with a dynamic scene depicting a singing flash mob of in sync, brilliantly animated penguins dancing to adapted songs by artists like Pink and Justin Timberlake.

By all accounts, the movie starts out entertaining. Only a horrible and unlikable person would suggest that it is boring to witness adorable fur balls dancing to “We’re Bringing Fluffy Back.” Yet unfortunately, the film reaches its climax in quality within these first ten minutes. The charm of the dancing penguins is consistently clubbed and overshadowed by a predictable and clichéd plot.

The whole movie revolves around subjects we have seen a thousand times before: the cute animated figures are consistently challenged by some incredibly daunting task that is quickly solved through love and kindness. Erik’s (the smallest and most shown penguin) lack of self esteem is easily solved through some overly sentimental singing, and the predatory birds that attack the penguin colony are quickly scared off by another group of lolling penguins.

In other words, the plot is so weak because it is too obvious that every moment of despair will be quickly solved by some exaggerated act of kindness. Despite all the splitting glaciers, threats of starvation, and battle scenes, not one animal even receives more than a scratch in the film.

Happy Feet Two lacks the legitimizing moment that every animated movie needs: the plot twist meant to let the audience know that what they’re watching is not a conceptually limited joke. There is never even a believable hint at a Simba-esque tragedy, or of the internal conflict that afflicted Pinocchio. And every attempt the story makes at being ominous is overridden by the predictable harmonizing of penguins every two minutes.

This is a movie that is best served for very young children. The incredible visuals and moderately encountered funny moments, generally attributable to the Krill (played by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon), are overshadowed by the increasingly sleep-inducing plot. As would be expected, the young children in the movie theatre smiled and laughed as if it were Christmas.

So if you have a small child or sibling, you can take comfort in knowing that they will be happily entertained for two hours. But if you are not in this scenario, I would strongly recommend just watching a clip of the dancing penguins on YouTube; save yourself the boredom and concerned looks of the parent-filled audience.