I watched Mr. Popper’s Penguins on a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles a few years ago. I had nothing else to do. The movie was better than I expected, worse than I hoped, and exactly the kind of forgettable, harmless, technically competent family film that you watch on a plane and immediately forget. Then my kids found it on cable about six months later and made me watch it again. They laughed out loud at the penguins. The penguins are, somehow, the best thing about the movie. That is the entire review. The penguins are delightful. The movie is fine. We will watch it again next summer. I will not defend it. I will not trash it. I will explain it.
The Jim Carrey vehicle that sort of works
Mr. Popper’s Penguins came out June 17, 2011, directed by Mark Waters, with a $55 million budget. It grossed about $187 million worldwide, which counts as a modest hit. The film stars Jim Carrey as Tom Popper, a divorced Manhattan real estate developer whose estranged father, an explorer who has just died in Antarctica, leaves him six penguins. The film is based on a 1938 children’s book by Richard and Florence Atwater. The book, which I have not read, is reportedly a Newbery Honor winner. The film is a comedy about a workaholic dad who learns to love his kids again, with penguins as the catalyst. It is also a Jim Carrey vehicle. He is doing his Jim Carrey thing. The thing works. Or it does not. The film does not care which.
The plot: penguins, father issues, ice
Tom Popper, voiced into his smarmy real-estate-king persona by Jim Carrey, is about to close the biggest deal of his career. He is going to tear down a community center to build a stadium. He has not seen his kids in weeks. He is not on speaking terms with his ex-wife, played by Carla Gugino. The penguins arrive at his Park Avenue penthouse. His kids, played by Madeline Carroll and Maxwell Perry Cotton, are delighted. Tom is not. The film is a fish-out-of-water comedy for the first hour and a father-daughter story for the second. The community center gets saved, the deal gets blown, the dad learns to value his family, and the penguins fly home through a New York tunnel. Standard template. The penguins are the variable. They are a lot of fun.
The penguins on screen: how they got six penguins to actually act
Here is the part of the film I did not expect. The penguin work is genuinely good. Twenty20, the company that built the penguins, used real penguin footage as reference. The six penguins in the film are Captain, Love Triangle, Loud, Stinky, Nimrod, and Cool. They waddle, they preen, they argue, they slide across marble floors. The film has footage of them escaping the freezer, eating sardines off the carpet, sliding into the bathtub, and destroying a 200-thousand-dollar painting. The penguin moments are timed and staged like a Buster Keaton short. They are also the only moments in the film that feel like they were made by a director who was having fun. The rest of the film is competent. The penguins are joyful.
The dad on screen: Jim Carrey, phoning it in, sort of
Jim Carrey is doing his 2011-era Jim Carrey performance. He mugs. He overreacts. He does the rubbery face thing. He does not do it with the manic energy of The Mask or the sadness of Man on the Moon. He does it with the kind of low-grade enthusiasm of a man who has a mortgage. This is, in fact, the right note for the character. Tom Popper is a man who has stopped trying. The film is an excuse to let him start again. The problem is that the film around Carrey is not very interesting. He is carrying the movie. The penguins are carrying him. The supporting cast is, in the kindest possible reading, decorative. Carla Gugino is wasted. Angela Lansbury appears as a doorman. That sentence should make you want to watch the film. You should resist that urge.
The emotional core: the dad learns to leave work early
About two thirds in, Tom has to choose between closing the deal and keeping his penguins. The deal is going to make him rich. The penguins are going to be sent to a zoo. He picks the penguins. The film is honest about the way workaholic dads damage their kids. Tom’s mother, who appears in flashbacks, was a different kind of neglectful. The film is doing a thing about how absent parents leave echoes. The thing is fine. Not great. Fine. The film treats the realization as a punchline. The kid gets the birthday party. The dad gets to stay home. Everybody is happy. The film is not interested in the messiness. The film is a comedy, not a drama. It knows what it is. That is part of the problem.
Best Points, Weaker Points, and Audience Fit
Best: The penguins. The painting destruction scene. The freezing-rain pool gag. The penguin escape from the apartment. The Angela Lansbury cameo. The scene in the diner where the penguins argue. Actually, the penguins, period.
Weaker: Jim Carrey is muted. The romantic subplot is completely inert. The penguin-to-the-zoo ending is somehow both sentimental and rushed. The whole film is a half-hour too long. The villain, played by Clark Gregg, is too thin to be a real obstacle. The film makes the mistake of making the dad «unlikeable» in the first act and then expecting us to forgive him in the third.
Audience fit: Kids 6 to 10. Parents who have a long flight and need to put on a movie. Anyone who likes penguins. Anyone who reads a 1938 children’s book and thinks “this should be a Jim Carrey movie.” People who do not exist. Maybe one or two of them are out there.
Mr. Popper’s Penguins review: my verdict
★★★☆☆. Three stars. Mr. Popper’s Penguins is a perfectly fine family film. The penguins are better than they have any right to be. Jim Carrey is muted. The dad arc is forgettable. The plot is the standard 1938 children’s book adaptation that 20th Century Fox made into a Mark Waters vehicle. There is nothing wrong with the film. There is also nothing notable. The film does not aim for greatness. It does not fall into disaster. It just exists. If you want a Mr. Popper’s Penguins review that does not pretend to be anything more than what it is, this is your film. It is family-friendly. It has animal moments. The penguins are fun. The film is fine. My kids will watch it again next summer. I will be on the couch, half-awake, reading the news. The penguins will do their job. The film will do its job. We will all survive.
Yes. The film is rated PG for mild rude humor and some slapstick violence. Most kids 5 and up handle it fine. There are no scary scenes, no real violence, and no content that requires a parent to intervene. The penguins are the main thing and they are entirely child-safe.
Yes. The film is based on the 1938 children’s book by Richard and Florence Atwater, which was a Newbery Honor winner. The film keeps the bones of the book: a man who inherits six penguins and learns to be a better father. The film adds the romance, the real estate plot, and the Angela Lansbury cameo.
Jim Carrey as Tom Popper, Carla Gugino as his ex-wife Amanda, Angela Lansbury as the building doorman Mrs. Van Gundy, Clark Gregg as the developer villain, and Madeline Carroll and Maxwell Perry Cotton as his kids. The voice of the penguin group is provided by the real penguins. CGI was used to enhance their expressions.
That work is not more important than family. That the people you love deserve your time, not just your money. That you can be a good dad and enjoy your life at the same time. The film is not subtle about this. It is also not wrong about it.
No. There is no sequel. The film grossed enough to make a sequel possible in 2011 but the studio did not move forward with one. The film exists as a single, contained, harmless family comedy. That is part of why it has stuck around on cable. There is no continuity to maintain. You can watch it once a year and nothing breaks.
