To be honest, I totally forgot that My Penguin Friend was coming out. It wasn’t until recently that I saw it playing at my local theater and remembered I once saw this trailer twice. I kind of lucked out also because it was only showing at two theaters within a hundred miles of me. However, this family movie was nothing special.
My Penguin Friend is a family drama that is inspired by true events that follows Joao (Jean Reno), a Brazilian fisherman that rescues a lost penguin and nurses him back to health. He ends up calling his new friend Dindim. Every year during migration season, Dindim swims thousands of miles to and from the Brazilian coast to visit his human friend. He continues this trend for eight years and this movie tells the story of a few significant events that took place during that time.
The story starts off kind of slow while it explains the heartbreak and loss that Joao goes through and then we get introduced to the star of the show, the penguin. Joao cares for the penguin by feeding him, bathing him, and making a nest for the little guy. He is then confused and broken when he wakes up one morning to see the penguin left and went back to sea. Several months later, Joao is ecstatic when he sees Dindim show up in his dining room and then realizes that “he comes and goes as he pleases”. Joao brings Dindim to town where everyone starts talking and posting videos online. This catches the eye of a team of marine biologists that have been assigned to study the penguins that Dindim goes back to every year.
I had no idea My Penguin Friend was based on a true story until I saw the opening credits. Like I said before, I completely forgot about this movie but I am kind of glad I went to see it. It was definitely a cute watch for sure but also did have its flaws.
Jean Reno did a good job portraying Joao. Obviously I have no idea what Joao was like in real life, however there is a montage at the end of the movie and with just those few short clips. You couldn’t tell the difference. The small cast also consisted of Adriana Barraza, Ravel Cabral and Nicolas Francella, with many lesser known but talented actors and actresses. Everyone did a fine job and while nobody stood out for their performances, there was no one that was awful and took away from My Penguin Friend.
Another thing to note is that 80% of the scenes with penguins actually had real penguins and the other 20% was split up between CGI and animatronics. This is where I had some problems. I think the parts with the live penguins were great and amazing how they can train or have penguins do certain things for movies. However, the CGI penguins were just terrible and you can tell they were operating on a lower end budget. I think it was mainly the scenes of the ocean and them swimming and it just wasn’t executed well.
There were some parts of the film that just dragged also. There were a few scenes of the penguins and them swimming that were just extended a little too long. This took away from the story a bit and caught myself dozing off a couple times. With that being said, this movie was a rollercoaster. Things would slow down quite a bit, then would pick back up and then would slow down and while sometimes that works, I just think it didn’t with this one.
The set pieces and locations My Penguin Friend was filmed was a great choice. All the scenes with the beach, Joao’s home and the beach where all the penguins lived in Argentina were shot wonderfully. It almost felt like I was on a Brazilian beach with Joao, his wife Maria and Dindim.
Final Thoughts:
This was a fine movie with a fine plot and fine acting. There is nothing special about it but it has great themes about family and friends and was a heartwarming surprise of a film. It was slow at times but the story was an interesting one that I may well in fact research and read up on. Working in the veterinary field myself, I can be a little bit biased when it comes to animal movies. This is a perfectly average movie about a man and his penguin friend.
