The Penguin Lessons, 2025.
Directed by Peter Cattaneo.
Starring Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, Vivian El Jaber, Björn Gustafsson, Alfonsina Carrocio, David Herrero, Micaela Breque, Tomás Pozzi, Ramiro Blas, Juan Barreiro. Gera Maleh, Brendan McNamee, Joaquín Lopez. Miguel Alejandro Serrano, Hugo Fuertes, Nicanor Fernandez, Aimar Miranda, and Florencia Nocetti.
SYNOPSIS:
In 1976, as Argentina descends into violence and chaos, a world-weary English teacher regains his compassion for others thanks to an unlikely friendship with a penguin.
Apolitical journeyman English teacher Tom Michell (Steve Coogan) arrives at an Argentinian campus in 1976 during a political revolution. He’s not concerned about this, but some chaos does interrupt his arrival and shut down the school for a few weeks, prompting him to head off to Uruguay for a mini-vacation. One thing leads to another, but there is a hysterical line that more or less sums up the situation Tom gets himself into in director Peter Cattaneo’s charming yet occasionally bleak The Penguin Lessons: paraphrasing, it goes something like “I took the injured penguin back to the hotel to impress a woman I wanted to sleep with, turns out she was married and got cold feet, left, and now I’m stuck with it.” Surely, the first lesson here must be something about the crazy situations a man will find himself in by thinking with his pecker.
Steve Coogan is playing a typical curmudgeonly Steve Coogan character (frequent collaborator Jeff Pope is also the screenwriter, adapting Tom Michell’s memoir); he doesn’t give a damn about a fellow teacher (Björn Gustafsson) droning on about his wife leaving him, he’s more than willing keeping politics out of the classroom for Headmaster Buckle (Jonathan Pryce), mostly stays out of a fascism supporter bullying a working-class socialist classmate, and seemingly irritates everyone he comes into contact with including cleaning staff member Maria (Vivian El Jaber). He is an admitted shallow, miserable crank.
However, now he has returned to the school with that penguin named Juan Salvador, and wouldn’t you know it, that indebted, empathetic bird will reveal layers and alter his perception of the world. While still clichéd, part of the difference here is that where another film would either have the protagonist hyperfocused on the animal’s safety or having the wherewithal to start doing the right thing immediately, Tom takes every opportunity available to get Juan Salvador taken away from him. Amusingly, it doesn’t work out. While even that concept isn’t necessarily fresh, having Steve Coogan in that role allows the humor to pop and the character’s frustrations to feel lively.
To say that the film is all about the penguin, though, would be disingenuous. Yes, it’s no surprise that the penguin ends up in the classroom to make it more enjoyable and keep the students focused on Tom’s lectures. However, political strife between a fascist military government and rebels is still playing out in the background. Tom also meets Maria’s politically focal granddaughter Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio), whom he quickly respects for speaking her mind.
That’s all that should be said about the narrative (which is inspired by true events albeit seemingly liberally with embellishments for emotional effect), as the film goes somewhere between nutty but logical as long as one is paying attention. The structure here lays out Tom’s shortcomings, meaning it’s only a matter of time before he is forced to confront them somehow, now with an emotional support penguin where the bonding guides him in the right direction. The gist is that there is also a political awakening here and that, even if the filmmakers don’t dig too deep into this revolution and Argentinian politics, a tragic thing or two occurs that rattles him and slowly pushes him into action. It’s also okay that there is less concern with Argentina since the focus is on Tom; this is, above all else, a story about him and how his life was changed.
Admittedly, The Penguin Lessons becomes mawkish in the final 20 minutes with an abrupt conclusion for one significant plot element. The entire movie is in tonal disarray, but Steve Coogan centers it and finds all the necessary, complex emotions within Tom aside from eliciting laughs. That’s a filmmaking lesson: if a film is tonally and emotionally all over the place, bring on a versatile performer such as Steve Coogan to keep it grounded and sincere, ensuring the material is working and engaging.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
