The Penguin Lessons movie review (2025) | Little White Lies

The Pen­guin Lessons review – think Dead Pen­guins Society

16 Apr 2025 / Released: 18 Apr 2025

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Peter Cattaneo

Starring Björn Gustafsson, Steve Coogan, and Vivian El Jaber

Group of young men in school uniforms standing together.
Group of young men in school uniforms standing together.
3

Anticipation.

Gentle buddy comedy with Steve Coogan and a penguin? Ehh…

2

Enjoyment.

Deals with the reality of a political coup in an off-putting, soft-edged manner.

2

In Retrospect.

Coogan may yet excel as a serious dramatic actor… but not this time.

Steve Coogan co-stars with a pen­guin in this gen­tle dram­e­dy from Peter Cat­ta­neo that nev­er quite match­es up to the true story.

You fig­ure that some­thing is amiss when Tom Michell (Steve Coogan) rolls up to his new gig teach­ing Eng­lish at a board­ing school in Argenti­na cir­ca 1976. As he exits the taxi, he’s faced with anti-gov­ern­ment graf­fi­ti and bombs explod­ing in the near­by town. He’s look­ing for escape as much as a pay­ing job. As the country’s infra­struc­ture begins to crum­ble and work­ing-class free­dom fight­ers are ran­dom­ly dis­ap­peared, Michell slopes off to Uruguay in search of a lay, but ends up return­ing to Argenti­na with a Mag­el­lan pen­guin in his kit bag who becomes a vital teach­ing aid amid the may­hem. Sweet-natured, inspi­ra­tional, light­ly-com­ic hijinks ensue; think of it as Dead Pen­guins Soci­ety.

Coogan is still unfor­tu­nate­ly sad­dled with so much bag­gage from his var­i­ous com­ic per­son­ae that it’s dif­fi­cult to sus­pend dis­be­lief when he’s feign­ing earnest­ness, so the film nev­er hits the heights of charm for which it’s aim­ing. And while there’s cer­tain­ly fun to be had watch­ing a cute pen­guin (named Juan-Sal­vador) wad­dling around the school, chug­ging sprats and mim­ic­k­ing his mas­ter, the film nev­er amounts to more than a piece of super­fi­cial fluff. Beyond its mes­sage of find­ing the courage with­in your­self to allow hope to defeat despair, it also ends up being a bit of an apolo­gia for inef­fec­tu­al white men who need to expe­ri­ence some­thing trans­for­ma­tive in their lives to be able to extend empa­thy towards their fel­low man.

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