Do birders consider penguins? I mean they must, right? If you were out birding and saw a penguin, you’d log it. Why wouldn’t you? Can you tell I’m stretching to talk about this film? I mean, here it is: Man nurses injured penguin back to health. It returns periodically for more fish. Big whoop.
Ok, I’m being more callous than I should be. It’s cute when man and nature interact. I encourage that … or the positive parts of it; can’t say I’m big on hunting.
On Isla Grande, Brazil, there is a small beach town where the locals fish, fish, fish and in-between fishing trips, they fish a little more. Local father João gets bullied into treating his boy to a birthday fishing trip. Long story short, the boy drowns, and the family is never the same.
Decades later, it’s worse than anyone could have guessed. João has turned into Jean Reno, a fate you wouldn’t wish upon anyone. The film spends a healthy thirty seconds showing us how João has alienated himself from the town in the wake the wake of his son’s death, but then gives him a penguin to discover. Fresh off a 2,000-mile swim from Patagonia, Argentina, a Magellanic penguin is covered in oil and having trouble moving — or the film would like us to think; penguins can’t really act.
João cleans it up, feeds it fish; his son’s would-be-gf’s daughter names the thing “Dindim” or some shit; I need to see it in writing and never got that chance. So … movie over, happy ending, right?
Oh, there’s an hour left.
Wow, better invent some controversy, I guess. If this were a Disney film from my youth, the penguin would be the guardian of a mystical emerald and Don Knotts and Tim Conway would be trying to steal it.
That wasn’t th
e plot we got.
The plot we got was about researchers wanting to extra research Dindim. *sigh* Are Don Knotts and Tim Conway dead? Asking for a friend.
And … on a similar subject, don’t you think it would be cool if we could combine The Professional and My Penguin Friend to make a movie where Jean Reno trains a penguin assassin?
My Penguin Friend is cute, and in some ways an ideal family film: contains a few smiles, no sex, no violence, no guns, one implied death which will completely go over the heads of most children; it is a non-threatening film with a capital NON. OTOH, didn’t we just do this? I mean, we just had this film with a freaking octopus … and that film was better in just about every way, starting with the fact that it was a documentary and not a recreated history. Hey, kudos for quality penguin wrangling; I’m sure that doesn’t come cheap. Don’t get me wrong; there are many worse family films. My Penguin Friend -hopefully not to be followed by the erotic sequel My Penguin Lover– was acceptable drivel. Your kids might find it cute, but I think a nature documentary – any nature documentary- carries a lot more weight. … and it also doesn’t get to the part where a father has clearly substituted a bird for a child and we all pretend this is a reasonable compensation.
There was once a dad played by Reno
Who lost his child at sea, now we know
A penguin rolled ashore
And now he’s whole once more
Trading child for avian? I’m not keen-o
Rated PG, 97 Minutes
Director: David Schurmann
Writer: Kristen Lazarian, Paulina Lagudi Ulrich
Genre: Ornithophilia
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Did you cry during March of the Penguins?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Batman
