Mr. Popper’s Penguins: Predictably Pleasant – movie review

I’m a pretty big fan of Jim Carrey – I even like The Cable Guy. Mr. Popper’s Penguins looked like it’d be a cute movie that added penguins to the Jim Carrey formula. It did just that, but there were a few things about the movie that left me wondering “what was wrong with that?” I figured it out, but it didn’t take away from the movie.

First of all, I have to talk about the penguins. I absolutely adored them. Each one of them had a distinct personality, despite all but two of them being named an adjective with a “y” at the end. First, there was Captain, and she really was the first. She got her name from the fact that Popper’s dad was referred to as “Captain” by the people who sent the penguins, and she was clearly the leader. She also wanted to fly. She had the best developed personality, but that didn’t take away from the other penguins. There was Lovey, who was loving to everyone and potentially impregnated three penguins; there was Stinky, who was an exaggerated fart joke; Bitey, who bit everyone; Loudy, who wouldn’t stop squawking as loudly as possible; and Nimrod, who couldn’t figure things out and bumped into everything. Nimrod was particularly precious when he thought a snow globe was an egg.

I like Popper’s character, too. He’s a very unemotional guy. His dad dies, and he doesn’t even react. It’s sad because it’s not even that he’s unemotional, he’s just this functional level of sad. He knows things are messed up for him, but he’s so afraid of screwing them up more that he will just function sad and alone. I think being sad and alone motivates him to be as great as he is at his job, because at least then he gets satisfaction. It’s tragic, and I love my tragic characters. In fact, when we first meet Popper’s ex-wife and kids, his son Billy calls him Popper. I had to ask myself, “Is this even his kid?” Then I realized, that was the point – he’s that emotionally unattached. I like this character because he didn’t have to grow; he knew what he was doing, and he probably even knew why. He had to open himself up to the possibility of being hurt, because there was no other way to open himself up to the possibility of being happy. It was a bumpy road, but it was rewarding.

I have to prattle about Pippi. Pippi was Popper’s personal assistant and alliterated by popping P’s. In a movie about a man named Popper and his penguins, that was a lot of P-popping. It’s a catchy gimmick, and it’s sticking with me, as I find myself wanting to pop P’s in rapid succession. The joke was given away the very first time we met her – she doesn’t even realize that she’s doing it. It was really fun to see how she kept managing to get through a sentence with a bunch of P sounds, and it’s a vocabulary lesson. I like movies that have the potential to polish up people’s vocabulary.

I get a kick out of seeing certain actors on screen, and in Mr. Popper’s Penguins, I was treated to two! Jeffrey Tambor was in the movie in what I think is one of the funniest sequences, as Mr. Gremmins, a man from whom Popper is trying to purchase a building. The other one was David Krumholtz from The Santa Clause movies and Addams Family Values, who played Popper’s neighbor, Kent, who was sure that Popper was up to something and hiding illegal pets. Seeing them on screen made me smile.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins was not without its minor issues, however. The film student in me was absorbed in the structure of the movie and the film basics, such as camera angles and editing – it’s textbook, a cute movie to learn by. Some things did bother me, though, at the time, that I couldn’t pick up on until I gave it some distance. For example, there was one hanging storyline. Popper’s neighbor Kent is out to prove that Popper has penguins – but then nothing happens with that storyline. It’s just dropped at a time that it becomes a little crucial, and I really want to know what happened. All that set up, and they drop it before it has its resolution. Another issue I had with the movie that only occurred to me as I was melting outside the theater is that it’s June – but in the movie, it’s winter. There’s one throwaway line that points out it is Christmas in the movie, but I’ve gotten used to movies coming out in the same season that they’re set. If it’s summer for real, it tends to be summer in the movies. It’s not Christmas for another six months – it threw me for a loop. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just not what I’m used to.

Overall, I genuinely liked Mr. Popper’s Penguins. I’m not one-hundred percent sure I’d announce that to all my friends, but it was a fun movie with  penguins. It’s a good movie for Jim Carrey fans and people with kids – the kids in the audience I was in absolutely loved it. It’d probably make a good guilty pleasure movie for someone, too. At any rate, I would see it again.