Review: 'My Penguin Friend' is an animal adventure that's lightweight, light-hearted and light on the facts
There may not be a more sinister phrase to start a movie than “inspired by a true story” — because it’s a con, one employed in the timid adventure drama “My Penguin Friend,” that seduces the audience with a kernel of truth into ignoring how fanciful the rest of the popcorn bucket is.
The story is set in Ilha Grande, a fishing village on an island off the coast of Brazil. We meet Joao (Pedro Urizzi), a fisherman happily married to Maria (Amanda Magalhães), with a smiling young son, Miguel (Juan José Garnica). One day, Joao and Miguel are out on their small rowboat, a storm comes, and Miguel is thrown overboard and drowns.
After that tragic prologue, director David Schurmann picks up decades later, with Joao — now played by the French actor Jean Reno — hanging out near his old fishing buddies, or at home with Maria (played by Adriana Barraza, from “Babel”). Miguel’s death still weighs heavily on him.
At the same time, we’re shown a Magellanic penguin nesting in Patagonia, some 5,000 miles south in Argentina. The penguin joins his colony for their long migratory swim, but gets separated and caught in an oil slick. He’s nearly dead when Joao pulls him from the water and starts nursing him back to health. After a few weeks, the penguin heads to the water and swims away — and Joao and Maria think that’s the end.
Meanwhile, back in Patagonia, a trio of marine biologists (Alexia Moyano, Nicolás Francella and Rochi Hernández) are studying the rookery of penguins, and they spot one who’s a little different — because he’s seemingly not put off by human contact. They put a tag on his flipper and send him on his way.
Sure enough, the penguin returns to Ilha Grande, and to Joao and Maria, who are less surprised by his return than by the red plastic tag on his flipper. This being a family-friendly movie, the penguin — named DinDim (which is a type of ice pop in Brazil) — goes on wacky misadventures, like having the penguin waddle away from Joao and Maria’s beachside home into town, where someone shoots video on their phone that quickly goes viral. The video attracts both a TV reporter (Ravel Cabral) and those marine biologists.
Here’s where Schurmann and screenwriters Kristen Lazarian and Paulina Lagudi let that “inspired by a true story” label go to their heads. Seemingly unsatisfied with a gentle story of an elderly man who finds a penguin entering his life, the filmmakers inject artificial drama that’s laughably manipulative as it turns its human characters into idiots for the sake of its plot devices.
Generally, though, “My Penguin Friend” is a harmless enough diversion for kids, a throwback to the cheaply produced live-action “Wonderful World of Disney” entries of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Just don’t believe half of what’s in it, even after the movie shows footage of the real Joao and DinDim.
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‘My Penguin Friend’
★★1/2
Opens Friday, August 16, in theaters. Rated PG for thematic content. Running time; 97 minutes.