Rent The Penguin Lessons (2024)

Delightfully Surprising Stuff - The Penguin Lessons review by griggs

I braced myself for a twee overload, but Penguin Lessons won me over. I had expected it would be all fluff and waddles, but it certainly has more backbone than expected. Surprisingly, whilst it doesn’t dig too far into Argentina’s Junta horrors, it gives just enough to anchor the film into such a traumatic period. Coogan nails the washed-up Brit soul-searching in exile. And yes, the penguin works—saving Coogan from himself and his past. Unexpectedly poignant, with more heft than its premise or trailers suggest. Delightfully surprising stuff.

Shades of Black and White - The Penguin Lessons review by CH

A charismatic teacher who draws upon poetry to inspire pupils to seek their own destiny amidst the confining spirit of a Fifties private school. Such a summary might bring to mind Dead Poets Society. The Penguin Lessons certainly does that - and more. Where Robin Williams urged the schoolboys to stand upon their chairs in a spirit of libreration, Steve Coogan has them becoming supine on the floor so that they can see a penguin loom over in the way they usually appear to him.

A penguin's perspective? Fanciful stuff? No, this is based upon a memoir of a young teacher - much more so than Coogan - who fetched up in Argentina as it fell victim to a mid-Seventies military coup. During the advent of that junta Tom spent a few days in Uraguay, from which he returned with a penguin (in a rucksack) whom he had been prevailed upon by an (alas) married woman to save from an oily death on the beach.

Keeping this side of sentimentality, he shies at the last minute from consigning the creature to the caged quarantine of a zoo and allows him the run of his room. More unruly than this creature are the Remove pupils - paper aeroplanes and all - as Coogan tries to make them grasp and relish the free-spirit beneath the surface of Masefield's "Sea Fever". In a moment of revelation he calls upon the bird to help him in the task - something kept secret from the stuffy Headmaster (Jonathan Pryce). Parallel with this is the kidnapping of a cleaner by the junta for her subversive behaviour.

If there are broad strokes to all this, it is no less affecting, and one has to marvel oneself at the bird (two real ones were used most of the time in the filming with occasional resort to a digital substitute when demands more arduous than a waddle or a quizzical look would have amounted to cruelty).

As with Goodbye, Mr. Chips near-sentimentality comes with a sadness which makes the tale all the more heartening. As for the ordeal of all those who, like the cleaner, were taken away in daylight, it is a reminder to watch again Costa-Gavros's Missing which turns around the similiar fate of many in Chile during that decade.

Heart-warming Feelgood Feathered-Friend Fable with Bite, very Loosely Based on a Memoir - The Penguin Lessons review by PV

I was not sure if this film would be a huggy slush-fest as so many feel-good heart-warming movies are - i have literally turned off more than a few before the end as I detest that schmaltzy stuff. However, though the tweeness is here - with a rescued penguin - the main character's cynicism and the political backdrop of 1976 Argentina helps the story to avoid drowning in slush slurry as so many others do.

The word for feelgood books like this is 'UP-LIT' - often near-fantasy stories of a stranger entering a community and touching the lives of everyone in a positive way. Films like The Untouchables (French, 2011) and Amelie and Chocolat and more are like that, and all these novels about people going on long walks. It is a slim, simple, feelgood story, perfect for family viewing at Christmas or whatever.

I first heard of the Penguin Lessons memoir on which this fictional film is based ('inspired by a true story') on a radio programme, World Service, I think. The author himself, Tom Michell stated in interview that the film was not his story really as it is altered and embellished, but hey, that is film. In reality, the 23 year old Tom became a chemistry teacher in Cornwall.

Here Steve Coogan plays a cynical fifty-something with a sad backstory (no spoilers). All fiction. No idea if other stuff that happens is fact or fiction. I do know no school private or state would stand for a lot of what happens in the lessons here anyway, all a bit Dead Poets Society etc. Coogan gives his best performance since the great Philomena (2013) and Stan and Ollie (2018). I try to forget how irritating he and his views are in real life when I watch him on screen...

The backdrop of the fascist dictatorship in Argentina and how many people went missing (presumed dead) then helps steer this story away from twee oversentimentality, as does some snappy cynical dialogue (no idea if that is from the book or not).

And the penguin is great! Spanish for penguin is pinguino I learnt here! The word is actually from the Welsh language, meaning HEAD WHITE literally, used to describe the extinct Great Auk originally. But sailors usually referred to the bird as 'arse-foot' which makes sense LOL.