Metacritic reviews

The Penguin Lessons is a charmer: a warmer of cockles, a tugger of heartstrings, even a jerker of tears if you’re not careful. And while it may in hindsight seem a little over-engineered to do all those things, that doesn’t dampen the effect. People’s Choice material or not, I loved it.

The main reason why The Penguin Lessons is sweet, but also poignant, is due to the script's keen eye for comedy in the face of a tumultuous backdrop.

Coogan brings a delightfully sardonic deadpan to the role of the bemused bystander observing the antics of penguins, adolescents and … military dictatorships.

Peter Cattaneo‘s amiable film adaptation matches the book’s feathery whimsy while reaching for a little more political import. Almost inevitably, it’s best when it’s about the bird.

While Juan Salvador is a shameless exhibitionist, Coogan’s performance is understated; he conveys Tom’s softening without nudging the viewer too much.

The film is peppered with comedic delight. Coogan’s deadpan gravitas leads the way in a cast that mostly delivers.

In its determination to maintain a glossy, upbeat tone throughout — even when dealing with an event that, as a final sombre title card tells us, saw ‘over 30,000 people killed or disappeared’ — The Penguin Lessons proves to be neither fish nor fowl.

The Penguin Lessons severely falters when it deals with the dangers of military occupation. It’s hard to watch a serious subplot involving people being “disappeared” by the government juxtaposed with scenes of cutesy penguin mayhem and classroom hijinks.

Unfortunately, the thin story feels terribly stretched and often doesn’t make sense.

It’s understandable that a film this gentle wouldn’t venture into the gory details of what happens to Tom during a bruising night in the cells but to gloss over any of the terror a civilian might have felt under the cosh is baffling.