The Penguin Lessons (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

The Penguin Lessons

THE PENGUIN LESSONS (2024)

Starring Steve Coogan, Björn Gustafsson, David Herrero, Jonathan Pryce, Julián Galli Guillén, Aimar Miranda, Nicanor Fernandez, Hugo Fuertes, Joaquín Lopez, Miguel Alejandro Serrano, Ramiro Blas, Florencia Nocetti, Micaela Breque, Romina Cocca, Alfonsina Carrocio, Tomás Pozzi, Vivian El Jaber, Juan M. Barreiro and Gera Maleh.

Screenplay by Jeff Pope.

Directed by Peter Cattaneo.

Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. 110 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Although it is made up of a few disparate – and seemingly incompatible – movie storylines, The Penguin Lessons is a sweetly charming movie that holds together well as a whole. The film has the inspirational teacher vibe of The Dead Poets Society, mixed in with cute penguin antics like Happy Feet, as well as the tragic dealings with a South American dictatorship like I’m Not Here or Kiss of the Spider Woman.

And it’s based on a true story, which makes the differing plot strands both more believable and more unlikely, all at the same time.

Steve Coogan – at his most sardonic – as British ex-Pat poetry teacher Tom Michell, who takes a gig in a Argentinean soon after the takeover of an oppressive military takeover of the country in 1976. Suffering from culture shock, an inability to reach his students, personal depression and lack of motivation, his life is sort of spinning out of control.

Everything changes when he is on the beach and finds a stranded penguin and saves it. To be perfectly honest, Michell only saves the bird to impress a woman he had met. (It doesn’t work.) However, even if he couldn’t connect with the lady, he starts a surprising connection with the penguin. The animal bonds with him, and between its unwillingness to let Michell leave and draconian local ordinances, he is forced to bring the penguin Juan Salvador (he is named after Juan Salvador Gaviota, the Spanish translation of the then-popular novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull) back to the school with him and try to hide him in his quarters.

Of course he is quickly found out – first by two cleaning ladies at the school, then by his students, and finally by the schoolteachers and headmasters. When the younger of the two maids, who have become quite fond of the penguin, is taken hostage by the government one afternoon – Michell is nearby and doesn’t help – his political consciousness is awakened. He tries to help find the girl, putting his life on the line.

He is also bemused to find the students are tickled by the penguin, and with Juan Salvador in the class they are more open to listening and learning. In the meantime, through his odd (but strangely adorable) pet, Michell learns to care for people and animals himself.

It makes for a surprisingly affecting feel-good film – if it is possible to have a feel-good film which closes with a chyron discussing 30,000 political prisoners who disappeared and were never seen again.

Still, The Penguin Lessons is sweet and funny and works better than it had any right to. 

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 28, 2025.