‘The Penguin Lessons’ Review: Antifascist Waterfowl Drama Is a Good Egg, Really
Penguins are some of the cutest animals in the world, second only to — and I admit that that I may be slightly biased — my two cats. Yes, whether penguins are marching, surfing, dancing or trying to blow up Gotham City with rockets strapped to their backs, every movie is better with at least one cute little waterfowl in it. Even a drama about an English teacher fighting fascism in Argentina in the 1970s while learning to love again.
“The Penguin Lessons” (or as I like to call it, “Goodbye Fish ’n’ Chips”) stars Steve Coogan as Thomas Michell. He’s a grumpy gus who’s given up on life. He moves into St. George’s, a boarding school for rich children in Argentina in 1976, expecting to coast by with zero effort. He doesn’t even care about the country’s violent political upheaval. When a coup d’état is declared, he’s just happy to get a week off.
Thomas tries to impress a woman by rescuing a penguin on the beach, but when that still doesn’t get him laid, he decides to return the freshly scrubbed penguin to the ocean. The cute little whippersnapper refuses to leave his side, and before long he’s stuck with the darned thing, hiding it from the snooty headmaster (Jonathan Pryce) while also using his new pet, Juan Salvador, to trick his students into paying attention in class.
Oh yeah, and while all this adorable falderal is falderalling, the new Argentinean government is abducting political dissidents by the thousands. This includes a spirited St. George employee (Alfonsina Carrocio, “Society of the Snow”), who is kidnapped right in front of Thomas’s eyes. The guilt he feels about doing nothing drives him to do something, because now that fascism has hurt somebody he cares about, it suddenly matters.
“The Penguin Lessons” comes from director Peter Cattaneo, best known for his Oscar-nominated dramedy “The Full Monty,” a film which deftly balanced sensitive working class commentary with a twee narrative hook about average joes who turn to sex work in hard times. His latest has a similar premise, a cutesy story about a curmudgeon and a heartwarming new pet, set against the backdrop of a disturbing chapter in world history. It’s a bit like watching a remake of “Air Bud” that takes place during “The Battle of Algiers.”
The events of “The Penguins Lessons” really happened, more or less, which gives Cattaneo’s film an out in the premise department. But it’s bizarre to watch a film about political turmoil and human suffering from the perspective of an outsider whose problems are so small that adopting a penguin can fix them. The again, if audiences expecting a cute penguin movie are forced to engage with the fact that any government which abducts people for having different political views is evil, and that everyone must do everything in their power to stop that miscarriage of justice, then nobody can say “The Penguin Lessons” isn’t at the very least well-timed.
There isn’t a whole more to say about it, frankly. Steve Coogan is Steve Coogan-y as usual, bringing a wry comic delivery to his most sullen lines of dialogue. The supporting cast is uniformly strong, especially Vivian El Jaber as the heartbroken mother of a kidnapping victim. The beats are all hit, and hit hard enough to resonate. If you’e not crying at the end, when “The Penguin Lessons” wants you to cry, then clearly you’re the one who really needs a penguin now. That oughta warm that icy heart of yours.
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