Director Peter Cattaneo, who made the delightful 90s hit The Full Monty, is back with the pleasant enough The Penguin Lessons, which is a balm for eager audiences. The comedy-drama opens with vintage video archival footage of Argentina and cars driving around, setting the nostalgic tone. But it isn’t so simple. Argentina, in 1976, had been under authoritarian rule, and its star, Steve Coogan, arrived to teach students removed from most of the political turmoil. Jonathan Pryce, who runs the school, almost over-explains the geopolitical implications of the day’s current event with a lot of audience hand-holding, which took me out of the movie.
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The Penguin Lessons’ is tonally all over the place, both tender and sweet, and can get dark, but it doesn’t take the grim moments as seriously as they should. Its approach to politics almost makes light of the coup, which feels like a sudden spring break away from fascism as the students are dismissed and teachers decide to go to Uruguay to have fun. He meets a woman with whom he wants to fall in love (highlighted by a funny date and dancing sequence). This leads Coogan to an unexpected love of a penguin. (“I ended up with no sex and a penguin,” Coogan quibbles.)
There is a thin plot about how Coogan is motivated to lose his daughter and wants to help his maid at the school get her daughter out of jail, who is imprisoned by the government. The Magellan penguin comic timing works well with Coogan’s stern and dry demeanor in an unexpected buddy comedy or Fish out of Water or Penguin out of Water. Many cute scenes of the Penguin dancing around are a big scene stealer, filled with comic gags, even when the movie overall has pacing issues. It is slightly melodramatic and doesn’t work as well when it emotionally connects with the maid’s dilemma and slows down the pacing. Despite this, The Penguin Lesson played very well for a cackling older audience who needed a delightful, sweet matinee escape; my audience of over 50 found this lovely and applauded very loudly at the end— the sign of a real crowd-pleaser.
The Penguin Lessons is now playing in theaters nationwide.
