The Penguin Lessons review – Steve Coogan seabird comedy drama tries to sell feelgood mood

Here is a well-meaning, awkward tonal jumble of a movie, based on the bestselling memoir by former teacher Tom Michell; it is a quirky true-story heart warmer, in which an adorable penguin is apparently supposed to redeem not merely the human hero’s personal heartbreak but maybe even the agony of Argentina during the 70s junta. It stars Steve Coogan, who has often in the past shown brilliant technique as a straight actor, and in Philomena with Judi Dench proved he is perfectly capable of carrying an un-ironised emotional story. But his performance here is bafflingly underpowered and opaque, as if he is slightly perplexed by the script he’s been given.

Coogan plays Tom, who takes a job in Peronist Argentina in 1976, teaching English at a stuffy private school for the sons of wealthy expatriates, and is wary of the overbearing headteacher, played by Jonathan Pryce. On a holiday to Uruguay, he rescues a penguin from an oil slick on the beach and finds himself responsible for this bedraggled bird. He ends up smuggling it back to Argentina with him where, named Juan Salvador, it becomes the unhappy and lonely man’s feathered friend – actually, his only friend. But all this happens in tandem with Michell’s personal involvement in combating the horror of the Argentinian junta in which innocent people get “disappeared” by the secret police – and this of course blunts the feelgood mood that the film is trying to sell.

Well, it is based on a story from real life, and real life is messy and doesn’t conform to neat Hollywood genres. On the page, a memoir can perhaps better accommodate more of the baggy, contradictory impulses and implications. Weirdly, I felt that this odd film might have worked better if it was just about the lonely man and the penguin without the Argentinian tyranny – or just about the lonely man and the Argentinian tyranny without the penguin. The real non-CGI bird itself is very sweet.