The Penguin Lessons

Directed by Peter Cattaneo, The Penguin Lessons follows misanthropic teacher Tom Michell (Steve Coogan) as he reluctantly adopts a penguin and finds that his life (and the lives of those around him) is slowly-but-surely changed. Filmmaker Cattaneo, armed with a screenplay by Jeff Pope, delivers a familiar yet progressively engrossing (and periodically spellbinding) drama that benefits from its raft of agreeable elements, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that Coogan’s completely captivating (and thoroughly sympathetic) turn proves instrumental in elevating the proceedings above its sporadically less-than-subtle narrative – with the predominantly enthralling atmosphere heightened by an inherently compelling storyline and recurring emphasis on standout interludes. (There is, for example, an unexpectedly tense sequence wherein Tom has an encounter with a menacing member of Argentina’s secret police.) And although the picture sometimes relies just a little too hard on its crowd-pleasing attributes (eg the climactic appearance of a missing character is a little too convenient, to be sure), The Penguin Lessons is, for the most part, a consistently entertaining true-life tale that often does, on top of everything else, pack one heck of an emotional punch.

**** out of ****