It’s not surprising that the director who gave us The Full Monty has again given us a crowd-pleasing film, but it is a bit amazing that Peter Cattaneo has coached—indeed, created—a most affecting performance from, of all animals human or otherwise, a penguin.

A mix of memoir and movie magic, The Penguin Lessons aims directly at the heart—perhaps at the expense of a lesson in some horrific history, as has been suggested by many who remember or study Argentina’s turbulent years in the 1970s when many thousands of people were cruelly “disappeared.”

But this particular story, written by Jeff Pope and based on a book by Tom Michell (the latter taught English at an exclusive boy’s school in Argentina during that time), focuses on one damaged Englishman (Steve Coogan) who rescues a penguin from an oil slick in Uruguay.

It comes as no surprise that, in return, the bird comes to serve as a lifeline for the man in his classroom and in his daily life (in that anthropomorphic way that involves a lot of skilled editing and animal wrangling, which in this case is so well done that you can’t help but be enchanted).

The movie makes good use of period footage at both beginning and end, and the soundtrack is quite effective in supporting the gradual uplifting mood that the man—and the audience—experiences as the story gently but firmly plays out.

The lessons to be learned here—perhaps best summed up in the man’s words “I’m happy that I’m sad” toward the end of the film—are well worth the investment of your time and your emotional bandwidth.


Editor’s Note: The Penguin Lessons is now playing at The SLO Film Center at the Palm Theatre.

By Charlotte Alexander

Charlotte Alexander is an award-winning author, editor, and publisher, with experience in media, higher education, and nonprofit settings. She has been writing reviews of local theatre productions since 2010, and her work has appeared in SLO Life Magazine, SLO Journal Plus, SLO City News, Two for the Show {Central Coast}, and most recently on her website WiseToTheWords.com. She is the co-author of "When Your Pet Outlives You: Protecting Animal Companions After You Die" (New Sage Press 2002; reprinted 2004), which won a Muse Medallion Book Award from the Cat Writers’ Association. She owns and operates C|C Imprint.