Movie number 17 of 2025\
The Movie: The Penguin Lessons
The Cinema: The Classic in Elsternwick
Runtime: One hour fifty minutes
Stars: 3.75
Steve Coogan can be a bit of a polarising figure. Love him or hate him, I'm enjoying his straight roles. A lot of them are rather self-deprecating loners looking for a connection. Surprise, surprise, we find this sort of character in The Penguin Lessons. But this is not a bad thing.
Coogan plays Tom Michell, an English teacher contracted to a posh boy's school in Buenos Aires in 1976 and the height of the military junta. Michell wants to stay out of everything and just do his job. His principal, Tim Buckle (Jonathan Pryce) demands he keep an orderly existence. No noise, no mess, no pets.
When Michell and his colleague Tapio (Björn Gustafsson) take a holiday to Uruguay to get away from the military coup for a week, in his frivolities, he discovers a live penguin in an oil slick.
Tom takes the penguin back to school with him and hides him out in his room. And here's where the fun begins and the lessons are learned. It's amazing what group of 14-year-old boys will do to get to play with a penguin. It's a well-known fact that there are very few redeeming features to adolescent youth, but Juan Salvador, the penguin, helps to bring out the good in all of them. As the movie goes on, we learn about the circumstances of Michell and many of the staff and boys, all of this within the backdrop of the military coup, where people are plucked off the street and disappears with no warning.
As films go, this is a lot of lightweight fun, Coogan's sarcasm muting the serious events which are going on past the school's gates. This lacks the gravitas of films like I'm Still Here or The Secret in Their Eyes (the decent Argentinian one, not the awful American remake) yet it's still a very entertaining hour an a half. You could take an older child along and they might enjoy it. Yes, there's a little bit of swearing, but the violence is muted.
In all, this was a nice diversion based on a true story. It's light. It's fun. There's a penguin, who's very cute. What more do you want in a gentle Saturday afternoon film?
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