Over the weekend, the cover-up continued regarding the dark, depressing, deeply disturbing film misleadingly titled “Happy Feet.”

On the day of its release (Friday, November 17), a typical newspaper ad featured a laughing, dancing penguin waving his flaps and kicking up his feet, along with effusive quotes from critics:

“Adults and kids alike will be dancing in the aisles.” – Don Jewel, Life & Style Weekly

“THE MUST SEE MOVIE – one of the most wonderful in years. A miracle of originality and imagination.” – Gene Shalit, TODAY

These shameful and dishonest “blurbs” don’t just speak to a matter of taste--- of course, critics will disagree about the quality of any feature film. My concern with the suggestion that “adults and kids alike will be dancing in the aisles” is that it utterly misstates the nature of the cinematic experience on offer. Even most (but, alas, not all) of those who admire “Happy Feet” acknowledge that it hardly constitutes a feel good frolic for the youthful audience.

In the New York Times, for instance, the always eloquent Manohla Dargis wrote a rave review but showed enough respect for her readers to write honestly about the movie’s disturbing elements. Commending director George Miller for presenting “a vision of the world seen through a glass darkly,” she declared: “Even in a story about singing-and-dancing fat and feather, Mr. Miller can’t help but go dark and deep….Tucked inside this nominally feel-good jukebox musical with its crooning and swooning critters is a piercingly sad story about the devastation being visited on the natural world. The tapping we hear, as it turns out, is drilling holes in our hearts….Mr. Miller…plunges his hapless hero into a nightmare worthy of Samuel Fuller’s ‘Shock Corridor.’ As politically pointed as it is disturbing, it is a view of hell as seen through he eyes and ears of creatures we foolishly, tragically call dumb.”

“Shock Corridor,” by the way, is a deeply disquieting, 1963 film noir about a reporter who goes undercover as a patient in an insane asylum to try to solve a murder, but ends up losing his own sanity in the most horrifying manner.

Why would any responsible parent want to bring the children to a “Shock Corridor” for kids? Would most moms and dads truly welcome a film proudly described by its honest fans as “disturbing” and “a nightmare” and “a view of hell,” simply because it is “politically pointed” with its descriptions of “the devastation being visited on the natural world.”?

The effort to mask this reality with talk about “singing and dancing in the aisles” may succeed in bringing in large, eager audiences for the film’s opening weekend (parents are always hungry for kid-friendly animated entertainment) but once the word-of-mouth kicks in, watch for the quick box-office collapse of “Happy Feet.” No other recent release so richly deserves to fail. Perhaps that all-but-inevitable rejection will send a message that the American people don’t welcome the idea that our entertainment-crazed kids should be held hostage to the political agendas, dark obsessions and dishonest marketing campaigns of irresponsible filmmakers and unscrupulous studios.