Avis des critiques

It’s a softhearted, softheaded work that piles a lot of overly familiar elements into a single film... “The Penguin Lessons” is a limp, safe, calculating movie.

The beats all get hit, and hit hard enough to resonate. If you’re not crying at the end, when “The Penguin Lessons” wants you to cry, then you’re the one who really needs a penguin. That oughta warm that icy heart of yours.

Anyone just expecting a cutesy animal romp may be sorely disappointed, but that’s because this isn’t about the quietly expansive inner life of Juan Salvador.

While Juan Salvador is a shameless exhibitionist, Coogan’s performance is understated; he conveys Tom’s softening without nudging the viewer too much. On the other hand, the misuse of Nick Drake’s “Northern Sky” on the soundtrack is egregious. The rest of the picture is largely winsome and inoffensive.

The film does a really good job of balancing humour with the more emotional moments, creating a perfect balance between the two.

“The Penguin Lessons,” was the kind of breezy read that bridges adult and juvenile tastes for animal stories; Peter Cattaneo‘s amiable film adaptation matches the book’s feathery whimsy while reaching for a little more political import. Almost inevitably, it’s best when it’s about the bird.

The film is peppered with comedic delight... But the balance between comedy and pathos is noticeably off, and the choice to deploy the tumult of the military coup to fuel its historically diluted attempts at pathos misguided.

It was, perhaps, difficult to tell this particular story without including its political context; to do so might have been to attract another type of criticism. But in its determination to maintain a glossy, upbeat tone throughout... The Penguin Lessons proves to be neither fish nor fowl.

Anyone familiar with the book will be grateful for the small mercies of Pope’s script, which omits the penguin’s interior monologue and jettisons a scene in which Tom’s shyest pupil swims triumphantly alongside Juan Salvador in the school pool. Then again, readers didn’t have to endure Federico Jusid’s score, with its bandoneon, piano, classical guitar and click-clacking guiro drenching every scene like an oil-slick.