- Director: Peter Cattaneo
- Screenplay: Jeff Pope
- Cast: Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce
- Cinematography: Xavi Gimenez
- Editing: Robin Peters, Tariq Anwar
- Score: Federico Jusid
- Genre: Comedy-drama
- Runtime: 112 minutes
Argentina. 1976. In a country beset with political turmoil, Tom Michell (Steve Coogan) is hired to teach English at a private boys school. He struggles to do so; the boys are sons of upper class business types and are a rowdy bunch. A nearby bombing means no lessons for a week out of safety concerns so Tom visits neighbouring Uruguay. To impress a woman he meets dancing the night before, he saves a poor penguin from an oil slick on the beach. Try as he might to return it to its natural habit of the water, the bird is having none of it and follows Tom further and further inland. Thus, he reluctantly smuggles it back to the school and hides it in his lodgings.
The film tries to straddle the line between comedy and drama, failing at both. You have the inevitable farce of Tom attempting to hide the penguin from the headmaster (Jonathan Pryce) due to a ‘no pets’ rule, which didn’t even raise a smirk from me. On the other hand, we get an insight into how Argentinian politics of the era and the military coup d’etat that overthrew Isabel Peron’s government affected the lives of ordinary citizens. It comes off as too lightweight though.
Steve Coogan, known for his comedic performances, makes for a charmless leading man. When a penguin generates more interest and has a better screen presence than the lead actor, you know something’s gone terribly wrong. I felt like one of Michell’s students; driven to distraction. Not worth getting in a flap about.
My rating: 5 / 10
SilverScreen 