'The Penguin Lessons': So long, and thanks for all the fish
Steve Coogan's comedy-drama works better than it ought to
I was already skeptical whether it was a good idea to make a movie that’s both about both a cute penguin and the 1976 military coup in Argentina. Seeing the exquisitely sad “I’m Still Here” about life under the fascist regime in Brazil only made me more unconvinced – when I first saw the trailer for “The Penguin Lessons” I couldn’t quite believe it wasn’t a parody.
Well, the move is real, and I’ve seen it. And it’s better than I thought, thanks largely to a lovely performance by Steve Coogan somehow pulling together its web-footed comic elements and political drama elements. And the penguin is a charmer.
“The Penguin Lessons,” written by frequent Coogan collaborator Jeff Pope (“Stan & Ollie”) and directed by the maestro of the middlebrow British dramedy, Peter Cattaneo (“The Full Monty”), is based on the memoir of the same name by Tom Michell. Coogan plays Michell, an English teacher who has come to the private St. George College in Argentina in 1976, a bubble of Western privilege in a country where military checkpoints and secret police are a fact of life.
Michell at first comes across like a misanthrope in the class Coogan mode of “The Trip.” He keeps to himself, does the bare minimum in class, and dutifully follows the restrictions of the college’s officious dean (Jonathan Pryce). As the political unrest outside the school gates grows, he’s happy to ignore it.
That changes when he and a fellow teacher (Bjorn Gustafson) go to Uruguay for a vacation. While walking along the beach trying to charm a woman he meets at a bar, they come across a penguin trapped in an oil slick. Largely to impress his date, Michell frees the bird and brings it back to his hotel to clean it off and care for it.
The date vanishes, but the penguin won’t leave his side, and Michell reluctantly smuggles it back through customs to Argentina. The movie is helped immeasurably by the decision not to create a CGI penguin or use other digital trickery, but to have a real live penguin (named Ricard) on set with Coogan.
Human and bird have a strange but authentic comedy-duo chemistry together, with Michell’s haughty disdain completely useless against this waddling, adorable bird. Soon he’s sneaking the bird, named Juan Salvador, into the classroom to get his students’ attention, re-energized as he teaches them about poetry. It’s “Dead Poets Society” with a live penguin.
Just when you think “The Penguin Lessons” will be a somewhat elevated “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” there’s an unexpected dramatic scene midway through that deepens the film. Michell is out shopping with a school housekeeper (Alfonsina Carrocio) when she is snatched off the streets by secret police. As she’s bundled into the back of a car, Michell just watches, frozen. Coogan beautifully plays both his terror and his shame at doing nothing.
Coogan carefully strips away the cynical layers of Michell to show how they’ve become a defense mechanism for a timid, lonely man. He decides to re-engage with the world, joining the political activists in the streets and confronting the menacing secret policeman who kidnapped his friend. To see Michell risk his comfortable life and speak out against a corrupt regime is both inspiring and highly relevant.
Not all of “The Penguin Lessons” works, particularly a forced metaphor about the penguin at the end that attempts to tie the movie’s disparate themes up in a neat little bow. But as a funny, poignant, minor-key comedy-drama, it might just waddle into your heart.
“The Penguin Lessons” opens Friday in theaters. In Madison, it will play at AMC Fitchburg 18 and Marcus Palace.
I liked it too! Review to come!