It has been more than a couple of decades since we last saw Jean Reno in the role of a rough and tough guardian to a young kid in the movie “The Professional.” Now, with director David Schurmann’s “My Penguin Friend”, it is a case of returning to a successful idea.
In the filmmaker from Brazil’s heartfelt all-age story, Reno portrays a mourning father who has saved polluted waters and gained a new pet. After the Brazilian fisherman’s connection with a stranded Magellanic penguin, which involves a breach of its genetic programming, the French actor also portrays comic reinterpretations, as he decorates the fun, satirical and moving elements of the film with tenderness and restraint. Hence, it is a film for enjoying about love and hope that is people’s favorite stories about redemption, perseverance and sympathy.
João’s road to fame started when he already had everything. His house located close to the beach in Ilha Grande, Rio de Janeiro, surrounded with happiness, music and laughter. It was a time, when João Urizzi was a resourceful man, caring for young son Miguel and devoted father to Juan José Garnica and a husband to Maria Amanda Magalhães. But everything changed significantly and without any warning when one day, while fishing with his son, a high seas tempest turned their little boat over and drowned the child. Years later and thousands of kilometers away in Argentina’s Patagonia a ten step-in penguins DinDim is also not having a good day. While moving with his colony, he takes a wrong turn and gets caught in an oil patch, lost at sea and unable to swim until one day while fishing off an island Joao finds him.
The fisherman’s instincts take over as he sees this confused ‘creature’, and he makes a deal with maria (a well-intentioned supporting Adriana Barraza) to wash, feed, and cure DinDim (named after a mispronounced ‘penguin’ by a girl in Portuguese). What’s difficult is saying goodbye, as the fish-eating squatter has gotten quite comfortable in his new, tropical home. But the little fella leaves when he wants to leave, working hard to get back to his burrow in Patagonia. However, a wonderful surprise happens when João’s persistent penguin buddy shows up again the next year, their friendship takes the internet by storm and not just the world, but three researchers (Alexia Moyano, Nicolás Francella, and Rochi Hernández) who have been observing him in his penguin huddle also get interested in him now.
Kristen Lazarian and Paulina Lagudi, the screenwriters, don’t let the original groundwork go to waste and add to it gracefully–instead of remaining a sweet but simple tale, the film is made larger in its emotional arc and has a gentle as opposed to activist’s ecological message. It deals in nuance, which is evident from the arc of João’s vigilance and consequent grief, which results in isolating himself from the rest of jubilant society, as well as the pollution’s effects on living beings in the ocean.
This film follows the evolution of his bond with his closest companion Oscar (Maurício Xavier), who assumes the role of a surrogate father, with the penguin taking on the role of an irritatingly unnecessary and ostentatious peripheral figure. The audience understands why João is so protective of the penguin, pointing to his late son’s sweaters to knit a makeshift coat for the animal, or begging Oscar to assist him in the final scene. As a result, instead of over-emphasizing these details, the film utilizes its subtle accomplishments with precision.
Cooper in particular, alongside his most gifted crafts team, reveals a lot of visual imagination as if it was some perspective because most contemporary animated family-oriented movies just patronize them. He combines the poetic and very action-driven imagery as in violent and capricious storm sequences during divested Joao’s boat, or gentle cuts of helpless townspeople Maria begging for Joao’s help he earlier rejected. The film as well offers another angle of the world from the POV of Din Dim who, apart from the camera fixed at his low height, views his world through special glasses which imitate his sight. To enhance the believability of the scenes in the territory of the penguins, Schurmann works closely with wildlife DP Cristian Dimitrius, to wonderfully document the daily routine of the whole colony’s hunting stalk and their dodging attacks: the scenes completely remind the films were “The Black Stallion” or “The Bear.”
If it comes to the description of the story or the acting, fortunately, there is absence of burlesque, or artificial intrusive melodrama and that’s the reason why it s sadly quite disappointing to see such reliance from the directors on such heavy-handed Fernando Velazquez s score rather than Dirtbag Penguin TP-ing the bathroom and getting up into some monkey business.
It is too bad that they did not show a similar self control in this case, expecting that their fans would be enthralled without the help of music. For children, music has an added layer of emotion, which may work, but for the old, it feels quite aggressive. There was no need to augment the overabundance of scenes including DinDim’s trip into the town, or his first days in the house with the zap of the strings. The sound of his little webbed feet flap across the cobbled stones and wooden floors should be enough to carry these scenes.
Though with a nice soft humor, plenty of warmth and a bunch of cute and obnoxious penguins, it is difficult to blame the faults of the movie. It stressed love, forgiveness, or hope and even the epilogue with its shots of the two of them and news about the couple was great. It is a gentle reminder of the importance of nurturing bonds of friendship and people, animals as well as the earth.
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