Mr. Popper's Penguins

As I suspected, the penguins in Mark Waters's Mr. Popper's Penguins are very cute as they mischievously frolic and mingle. But the film itself leaves little to the imagination as it slips and slides from one happy-go-lucky scene to another.

As if they made this film for children.

Mr. Popper (Jim Carrey) makes his living acquiring real estate and in order to become a full-fledged partner must convince Mrs. Van Gundy (Angela Lansbury) to sell her Tavern on the Green, a family run restaurant and the only piece of privately held property in Central Park. Mrs. Van Gundy will only sell to someone possessing personal and familial integrity, however, and balks at his initial proposal.

Mr. Popper has not been very successful at raising his family and is currently divorced and none to popular with his two children. But as fate would have it, his deceased father has left him 6 penguins which are a huge hit with his disgruntled kids. As the film reels on, the penguins bring Popper and his family closer together as he learns to genuinely care for them. Yet how will these penguins effect his professional development as they wear down the hardboiled edge responsible for nurturing his commercial acumen?

The penguins themselves are somewhat magical, possessing intuitive humanistic gifts that accentuate their cuddliness.

Unfortunately the writing surrounding their shenanigans, apart from the opening scene and those involving Pippi (Ophelia Lovibond), fails to impress, and although there are a couple of moments within which Carrey displays his considerable talents, many of the lines with which he is supplied freeze his gravitational intensity.

For someone who makes a living convincing people to let go of their most cherished possessions, throughout the film it doesn't take much for him to be outwitted. It's fun to watch while someone who possesses considerable talents in one domain can't find an outlet for them in another, but you would expect him to be somewhat more aggressive in his personal life considering that such tendencies are responsible for his financial security.

Perhaps Mr. Popper's Penguins is saying that you don't have to be a sharp ruthless cutthroat to be successful in business, and that one's modest clever creativity is enough to enable their career related acceleration?

Perhaps it is also saying that the introduction of something absurd into a predictable yet successful routine can recalibrate one's traditional approach in such a way that they discover that for which they have always been searching yet never consciously realized they desired?

Perhaps it is also saying that when one's personality alone is not enough to garner the support of their loved ones, special commodities are required in order to speak to that which they have been indoctrinated to love more than anything else, capitalism?

Whatever the case, the film doesn't flow well and where you would expect there to be cohesive links fluidly encouraging a congenially frosty dynamic, its Antarctic pitfalls breaks up the progress, and only a cheerful, bright, occasionally endearing narrative remains.

I would have rather seen a film entitled Mr. Smithers and his Little Dogs, starring John Waters, where the hero and his 6 little dogs reunite a recovering morphine addict with a former prostitute through the power of puppy love.

It's only a matter of time.