Movie Review: Mr. Poppers Penguins

Don’t go anywhere near this movie if you do not have children between the ages of 5 and 8. If you’re an adult or teen hoping to find America’s favorite rubber-faced human Looney Tune—the crazy, sarcastic Jim Carrey—he’s not here. It’s the rare movie in which the great Jim gets out-funnied by the guy playing the tiny concierge role.

This is the treacle-y predictable Jim Carrey, doing what comedy superstars tend to have to do every now and then, which is make kid movies. However, I overheard a boy saying to his sister in the screening I attended, “I liked the part where they slid down the ramp.” So the kids like it! So parents have a thing to plan for, which is always nice. And the moral of the story might be, the family that raises penguins together—stays together.

Mr. Popper is a slick salesman who uses over-the-top Tony Robbins-like sales pitches, which is probably exactly how Mr. Carrey would do it if he were a real-life salesman. His bosses want him to wrest New York’s famous Tavern on the Green from its owner, Mrs. Van Gundy (Angela Lansbury), but she’s only going to sell it to someone with character. So Jim needs to have a character arc from smarmy-vacuous to man-of-integrity.

He has a long-suffering ex-wife (whom he still loves) who’s starting a new relationship, a teenage daughter in the throes of hormones and unrequited boy crushes, and the son he needs to learn to not neglect in the same way his daddy neglected him.

Speaking of dad, in his will & testament he leaves Mr. Popper some cute penguins that can revive themselves out of a cryogenic package (don’t ask, it’s a kid movie, it’s a bit magical) and proceed to cause predictable mayhem. They have names pretty much in proximity to the pint-sized little people of Disney’s “Snow White.” Notice all the P’s in that sentence (nudge-nudge, wink-wink)?

The birds tap dance, they lay eggs, they graphically poop and toot way too much. There’s a pious zookeeper out to get them in the name of prevention of animal cruelty, although we suspect he might have less upstanding intentions.

Mr. Poppers Penguins is cutesy and hammy. It has lots of the music that tends to accompany such movies—clarinets tootling in the background, violins for the sentimental parts (which is constant). Jim makes his integrity transition, turning his high-tech million-dollar bachelor pad into a winter wonderland for arctic fowl, thereby keeping his promise to his son, which is to keep the birds and not give ’em away to the zoo. His new romance with his old wife heats up …

Then his old slick self has a relapse, and his kids are thrown into deep disappointment. But then he looks at his old penguin photos! And suddenly he’s back!

There’s a last-minute dash to the meeting he deliberately missed with Angela Lansbury and his bosses, in order to rescue the penguin family from the clutches of the zookeeper. He arrives with the whole family and penguins in tow, at Tavern on the Green, and voila! Angela Lansbury witnesses a man with integrity and sells him the Tavern.

You can’t keep six penguins in a New York apartment, so there’s a trip to Antarctica—and a family reunion. I’d like to say there’s also a happy humans-in-the-theater family reunion, but while the kids might be happy, the parents—perhaps not so much.


[etRating value=“ 2”]