It would seem that Mr Popper’s Penguins, a summer family stopgap between the Kung Fu Panda and Cars sequels, missed the movie-penguin craze by about five years, though perhaps it will prompt a penguin revival. In any case, the film, directed with bounce and snap by Mark Waters, stands as a comeback of sorts for Jim Carrey, who mugs and prances and does funny voices and manages not to be upstaged by a half-dozen flightless birds. The birds — real gentoo penguins with computer-enhanced abilities — honk, defecate and waddle around Manhattan while Carrey’s Popper, at first vexed and then beguiled by the creatures, tries to deal with them, his job, his children and the state of his soul.
Old-timers — those with vivid memories of Carrey’s Ace Ventura movies — will notice, with a sigh, that his rubbery limbs have lost a bit of stretch and his highly mobile face has acquired some lines. Mr Popper’s Penguins, based on the venerable and charming children’s book by Richard and Florence Atwater, signifies an important stage in Carrey’s maturation, or at least his transition from nitwit man-child to goofy dad. Just about every male screen comedian must negotiate this passage at some point: Eddie Murphy managed pretty well for a while with the Dr Dolittle movies. Adam Sandler struggled with Grown Ups, though that film’s box office returns suggested that the moviegoing masses did not mind.
And there is not a lot to object to in Mr Popper’s Penguins, a mildly amusing specimen of a genre that has produced some of the most unspeakable atrocities of recent cinema. (Do you think I’m exaggerating? Did you see Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel?) The hectic plot is fairly standard, with a soft therapeutic coating wrapped around situations that might be unbearably painful or embarrassing in real life.
Photo courtesy of Fox Movies
Neglected by his globe-trotting father, Popper grows into a sharkish real-estate wheeler-dealer, flipping New York landmarks and falling out of touch with his young son (Maxwell Perry Cotton) and adolescent daughter (Madeline Carroll). He must, in addition to wrangling the birds — a bequest from Dad, multiplied by a customer service error — try to win back his ex-wife (Carla Gugino) and woo a reluctant seller (Angela Lansbury) to part with the Tavern on the Green.
The arrival of the penguins precipitates Popper’s transformation from uptight money man into, well, Jim Carrey. Carrey is the kind of performer whose shtick reliably trumps psychological sense, and the film’s blithe incoherence with respect to its main character is one of its virtues. It turns sentimental now and then, but it knows — Carrey knows — that what the audience wants from him is silliness. Among Popper’s possessions is a boxed set of Charlie Chaplin DVDs, and while it may be presumptuous of Carrey to clown in such company, he is also paying tribute to a great precursor. The penguins, in any case, love the Little Tramp, recognizing a kindred spirit or at least a similar way of walking.
The valuable lessons go by without too much heartstring tugging, and you can enjoy watching the title characters, human and avian, cavorting in Popper’s snow-filled Manhattan duplex. A neighbor (David Krumholtz) objects, and a further complication arise in the form of an officious zoo guy (Clark Gregg), who denies that penguins could love Mr Popper. But why shouldn’t they? And why shouldn’t we chuckle at the alliterative shenanigans of his assistant, Pippi (Ophelia Lovibond), who packs a peck of plosives into every utterance.
As I said, there is nothing new here, but Waters, as he showed with the smarter and more daring Mean Girls and Freaky Friday, knows how to keep things buzzing along. Whether or not this movie sets off a new penguin craze, it will probably sell some penguin merchandise and provide about 90 minutes of tolerable jollity.
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