By John Corrado

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here.

In The Penguin Lessons, director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty, Military Wives) crafts a charming, based-on-a-true-story crowdpleaser that balances the sweet friendship between Steve Coogan and a penguin with Argentinian political drama. It’s a balance that probably shouldn’t work, but in the hands of Cattaneo and screenwriter Jeff Pope serves as a nicely done true story.

Taking a true story and turning it into a crowdpleaser is familiar territory for Pope and Coogan, who did similar a thing in previous collaborations Philomena and The Lost King. Coogan stars as Tom Michel, a British educator who gets hired to teach English at a posh boarding school in Buenos Aires in 1976. The country is undergoing a military coup, which provides the backdrop for the film, with the headmaster (Jonathan Pryce) suggesting politics won’t be talked about in class due to the families some of the boys come from.

A trip to Uruguay leads to Tom discovering the aftermath of an oil spill on the beach, and a penguin covered in oil that has managed to survive. Tom takes the penguin back to his hotel room, gets him cleaned up, and tries to return him to the ocean. But the little penguin keeps coming back, having seemingly bonded with him. This leaves Tom with few options but to sneak him back to Argentina, to stay with him at the boarding school.

The story has some more layers to it involving the tense political climate in Argentina at the time, which keeps Cattaneo’s film from getting too cutesy, despite the adorable flightless bird that Coogan shares many delightful scenes with. At the heart of The Penguin Lessons is the genuine bond between Coogan, who brings his usual dry humour to the role, and the penguin, who becomes a moral centre for the boys at the school. It’s a nice movie overall that carries enough broad appeal to find an audience.

Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)