Tom Michell’s feelgood memoir could have been a winning buddy movie with Coogan’s colleague – if it wasn’t for the titular bird always muscling its way in looking baffled
ilms set in Latin America during periods of political and social unrest – the early work of Pablo Larraín, say – have traditionally been low on Dead Poets Society-style inspirational uplift. Or, for that matter, penguins. Now the
This adaptation of Tom Michell’s cosy memoir The Penguin Lessons, scripted by Coogan’s semi-regular collaboratorand directed by Peter Cattaneo , begins in Buenos Aires in 1976, just as Isabel Perón is being ousted in a military coup. Tom, played by Coogan, pitches up with his wardrobe of snazzy beige and mustard-coloured jackets at a private school where he will be teaching English to the city’s most privileged teenage boys.
Tom vows to stay out of all that until one morning when a woman he is trying to impress cajoles him into rescuing a Magellanic penguin stranded on the beach in an oil slick. He hoses it down and then the blighter won’t stop following him. Before long, it not only has a name but it is living in Tom’s bath and becoming a confidant to everyone at the school.
It’s understandable that a film this gentle wouldn’t venture into the gory details of what happens to Tom during a bruising night in the cells but to gloss over any of the terror a civilian might have felt under the cosh is baffling. “You should see the other guy” is as close as it gets.
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