M. Popper et ses pingouins

Me and my wife took our 3 kids to this one, we wanted to enjoy a nice Saturday afternoon together watching a cute family flick, and this movie delivered what we were expecting. our kids laughed and had a lot of fun, and i found myself enjoying most parts of it.

Story is very familiar, about a business man " Carrey " who is always busy and away from his kids, then suddenly he inherits penguins that changes him and his life,..i guess you sort of know from here where the story is headed. a very simple, and might sound silly story, but executed in a very good manner, that made it better than your average family movie. Carrey was funny as always, and added a lot to the over all enjoyment of the film.

It is a family movie, starring Jim Carrey with penguins and is rated PG, what really are you expecting ? it is exactly what you would expect from this type of film. Just grab your loved ones, head to the theaters, and enjoy this movie for what it is, don't take it seriously, and you will have a great time !!

Light comedy at its best!

The movie started off on a very Light note as if there wasn't much to expect from until all the penguins arrived. The environment changed. Things around turned. It was the biggest tent pole a light movie could have had. Nimrod was my favorite. I am out of words to describe his curious and merry attitude. Jim wasn't at his best, wasn't going through the best of his times either despite having all-time best comedies and performances to his name. Still, he managed to deliver a spectacular performance. Two characters weren't agreat, his wife and the hotel owner.

I enjoyed, lqughed through out. It was quite a funny, adventurous journey, with the latter in bits and pieces.

Before I begin, let me say this: I like Jim Carrey. I really do. In fact, I watched Ace Ventura: Pet Detective back when I was a kid, and I still find it funny today. But, as with most actors and comedians, there is that little thing called shtick. Don't we all see a pattern when we see those familiar faces on the screen? In fact, it seems to generate the same kind of reaction: We become endeared to it at first, but then it gets real by the time the fourth or fifth movie rolls around. Will Ferrel, Adam Sandler and even Carey himself, are all the biggest 'offenders,' so to speak, in this day and age. But, for the sake of this interview, let's focus on the latter, and how this movie relates to his 'shtick.' The movie in question, if it wasn't obvious already, is Carey's latest venture, Mr. Popper's Penguins. Based loosely—the key word being 'loosely'—on the 1938 novel by Richard and Florence Atwater, "Penguins" tells the story of a work-obsessed businessman named Tom Popper, whose life is turned upside down when he inherits six penguins from his late explorer father. As is wont, his cold heart begins to melt by means of the flightless, cold-loving birds. In the meanwhile, he tries to evade suspicions of his bosses, a respected entrepreneur, and a brown-nosing zoo keeper while also rekindling his relationship with his estranged ex-wife and kids. And, yes, that's the plot in a nutshell. But, does that mean it's as mind-numbing as it sounds? No, my friends. It's not as bad as it seems.

First off, let's get the downside out of the way. The plot is thoroughly and shamelessly predictable. It is riddled with so many clichés, that I could sit there, predict every turn the movie was going to take and be right. Also, I sat there and counted six—yes, six—poop or fart jokes. There may have been a couple that I missed during a bathroom break, but I'm sure there were a couple more that I could have counted. I blush to admit it, but I do laugh at potty humor, but only when I don't expect it or it makes the movie actually funny. Again, predictability killed the mood for me.

However, for all its faults, it's more charming than repulsive. Carrey, though he is relying on his standard, over the top shtick, is not overshadowing those adorable penguins. But, aside from Carrey, his six co-stars, and his estranged family, there are two saving graces for this movie. Mr. Popper's secretary, Pippi (played by British actress Ophelia Lovibond) is a prim little poppet with a penchant for alliterating all her sentences with any and every word beginning with the letter P. She does grate a little bit, but she is still quite adorable. The other actress to show her face here is the great Angela Lansbury, who plays the owner of a restaurant that Popper used to eat at with his late father. It is so refreshing to see this woman on the silver screen again, especially for a girl who grew up with the likes of Beauty and the Beast and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (There's alliteration there, too, eh? Oh, darn this movie!). She still retains that grace and charm through all the forced dialogue and situations, and I applaud her for that.

Overall, my feelings for this movie can best be summed up by its summary on RottenTomatoes.com: "Bland, inoffensive, and thoroughly predictable, Mr. Popper's Penguins could have been worse…but it should have been better." But for all its faults, its charming, fun and completely harmless. It's probably best for kids, but animal lovers will love the cuddly penguins, and Carrey fans will like seeing their idol on screen. Give it a shot and decide for yourselves.

On our way to an "adult" film (the theater turned out to be inaccessible), we ended up at "Mr. Popper's Penguins," which my friend remembered as a book that her now-29-year-old daughter had enjoyed. I can't remember an evening of more unadulterated, good-hearted laughs in ages.

Viewers should be cautioned to abandon any need for verisimilitude. This is not "March of the Penguin," although Jim Carrey does reference Morgan Freeman in one line. The human children, however, are delightfully true-to-life, in their enthusiasms and frustrations. The penguins, however, manage to exhibit a charming mixture of human-child mischief appropriate to their penguin natures -- sliding on any slippery surface, splashing wherever possible, finding refuge in any icy habitat available in a Manhattan apartment.

The dialogue is very well written and well paced. Jim Carrey is at his best -- annoyingly over- the-top as a slick sales executive, genuinely bonding with his surrogate children as time goes on -- a virtual "Marty Poppins." Angela Lansbury displays her mastery of her craft as a wealthy dowager quite unlike the charming "Jessica Fletcher" persona.

By now, Jim Carrey's career is one lined with a long history of hit and misses—from the zaney and energetic debut of Ace Ventura, to the less than stellar murmur of say, Bruce Almighty, Carrey is one of those comedic actors who occasionally takes his brand of comedy to breaking point, but somehow manages to stick around and continue raking in the dough. Flash forward now to the summer of 2011 where the comedic landscape in terms of family features in the cinema all seem to heading in the same direction—talking animals—and you have a no brainer; hey, let's put those cute little fellas from Happy Feet in with that guy who made us a lot of money by pulling dumb faces! Sure; sounds like it could have potential, but in order to reach that potential one would have to, you know, write a script and not just mash them together with a generic by-the-numbers Big Business Man Learns To Be A Good Dad plot. Instead however what we're left with is an insulting homage to all things kitsch and puerile that repeats the same jokes over and over ad nauseam to the point of sheer boredom.

The plot is simple: Mr. Popper is a wealthy business man who has all the riches in the world, but lacks the one currency that sells movies; love. Struggling to father his children in the same way that his father provided little support for him, Mr. Popper ends up inheriting a box of penguins from his recently deceased dad as a means of (somehow) connecting and finding the love that he lost through his short-sighting endeavours. What follows of course is exactly what you might expect from that brief synopsis, and maybe a quick look at a minute of the trailer. At first driving Popper up the wall, the penguins who each have their own delightful trait (we have Captain, Loudy, Bitey, Stinky, Lovey and Nimrod) soon warm up to their cold-hearted owner and vice versa as everyone involved learns that big fancy houses and a six figure income only matter as long as you're having fun and loving everything and wearing sweaters and giving high fives and being as routinely sickly as humanely possible without starring in an advertisement for the Nintendo Wii. Oh, and there are poop and fart jokes; and penguins running into things; plenty of them.

As much of a stinker that the script is however, there was a time when one could rely on Jim Carrey and his assorted hijinks to bounce off stage and interrupt everyone's heavy eyelid batting and make us laugh, but even Carrey who is clearly showing his age here in this glossy advertisement for The American Dream fails to make much of an impression. There are a couple of moments here and there where Mr. Popper can be amusing, but for the most part he's like a bland, dislikeable caricature of Donald Trump. I mean, this is the same guy who made a lawyer the funniest person the screen during the summer of 1997— surely a salesman shouldn't be a problem? But it is; a real big one. And as it comes to its long overdrawn erratic conclusion, you get the impression that Carrey's comedic career is one destined to drown in a sea of similar safe-play Eddie Murphy-esque family comedies that leave adults snoring and kids running up and down the aisles. As Pippi Peponopolis might say; it's positively petulant, pandering and painful, Mr. Popper! So please, please stop pretending like love is the answer when clearly money is all that was on the minds of everyone involved here—that's you're problem and how you fix it—obviously—is to give everyone at 20th Century Fox a penguin. Yabsolutely!