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‘The Penguin Lessons’ Review: Steve Coogan Subverts A Potentially Whimsical Setup With Surprising Dark Humor – Toronto Film Festival
‘The Penguin Lessons’ review: Steve Coogan subverts a potentially whimsical setup with surprising dark humor – Toronto Film Festival
After an epoch-defining montage of civil unrest featuring Henry Kissinger and riot police, it begins in earnest with English teacher Tom Michell (Coogan) arriving at St. George’s College in Buenos Aires. Director Peter Cattaneo has fused melancholic comedy and social issues before, notably in his surprise 1997 hit The Full Monty, but The Penguin Lessons is dealing with a far greater humanitarian tragedy than unemployment in Sheffield, and the film’s low-key score sits somewhere in the middle, which doesn’t exactly help. The penguin itself is a MacGuffin in this respect, and what lingers in the mind longer than the final Super-8 footage of the real Juan Salvador is the story of a man newly developing a conscience, something that might get lost in the wash at a big festival screening but will certainly land on a more personal one-to-one basis.
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