Mr. Popper's Penguins (2010)

You live in an apartment in New York City and work within sight of the Empire State building. Your life is hectic but predictable.

Imagine getting a very unusual gift (turns out, later, to be from your father). It is a live gentoo penguin. Wanting to send it back, you ask for a return crate. You get a new crate all right--filled with five new penguins.

What a mess your apartment soon becomes! You get snipped at and dumped on by the penguins. You give them names, such as Nimrod, Stinky, Captain, etc. They are perpetually playful! The penguins swim in the bathtub and spill water all over. Your children from a terminated marriage come to visit, and, having long been alienated from you, absolutely fall in love with the penguins.

A nosy neighbor wonders what the noises are from your apartment and, suspecting that he is on to something, wants to tell the board about it. Worse yet, your new nemesis, a penguin specialist who works in the zoo, keeps spying on you. He has a behaviorist view of animals (making animals little more than machines made of flesh), and is determined to take your penguins from you. To him, penguins are simply fish-eating machines. He doubts if a non-specialist can properly care for penguins, and especially ridicules the notion that a loving bond has developed between the penguins and you.

In time, you turn your apartment into a winter wonderland, complete with snow, ice skating, etc. Some of the penguins lay eggs, and you are determined that they hatch. Your colleagues from work stumble upon your transformed apartment, and think that you have totally lost your mind. Your penguins follow you around wherever you go, and this produces its own share of comic events.

Everything comes to a head from the nosy neighbor, the penguin specialist, the kids, Popper's ex-wife, and his work colleagues. Popper is accused of breaking the law by housing penguins. He is fired from his job. He tries to win his ex-wife back. The penguin specialist has all of Popper's penguins. The apartment is normal once again, and the visiting children are heartbroken. And then... I will not spoil the ending by revealing it.

This is a very entertaining and heartwarming movie for the whole family. If you are an animal lover, this little tale is definitely for you.

Took my 7 year old daughter to see this movie today & Im really glad we went!

From the previews I thought the movie was going to be boring & lame, but I was pleasantly surprised with the movie!

The movie ran at a fast & very entertaining pace...

The theater audience laughed, laughed & then laughed some more...

The movie has comedy for sure, but also tells a great story & has a few very good life lessons in it...

The lengths Carrey takes to take care of these Penguins is just AWESOME!!!

Jim Carrey did a fantastic job as the lead actor...

He shows signs of his old hillarious humor from his early films, but is not sooooo over the top in this film as he was in past films...

He showed true heart & was very believable in his role!!!

The Penguins were unbelievably funny & simply amazing! They must have had some serious training!

The supporting acting was pefectly done by Mr. Poppers kids & ex wife...

Overall I give this movie an A...

I would recommend going to see this movie while its in the theaters...

I would also recommend it for adults & children...

Thanks for reading my review!

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Between Mr. Popper's Penguins and The ZooKeeper, ... I liked them both, but I liked Mr. Popper's Penguins more. Kids loved it too. Nice story. Has been while since I saw a Jim Carrey movie,... thought he did a good job in this role. And the penguins are hilarious! I didn't quite get that incredible name of Mr. Popper's assistant,.... with the fun voice and accent, ... miss P (?),... but I liked her character/role too. So many fun scenes in this movie. We had a good time.

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Jim Carey is funny and finally decides to please the kids and his wife. Movie is great, enjoyed, the moral content is top notch and it is always clean.

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I'm sorry. I forfeited all objectivity once the first penguin waddled on camera. Jim Carrey's past few flicks have been hit or miss with me, and maybe a part of it is that I've gotten accustomed to his schtick, despite the impressive rubber face and manic body contortions that would make a yogi master weep. And maybe I'm still holding NUMBER 23 against him. But what's cuter than an infestation of penguins? My niece and nephews adored this film. MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS, with its predictability and obvious gags, rises above the dreck by dint of penguins. Plus, it's got Carla Gugino, hotness personified.

Jim Carrey plays Tommy Popper, a businessman severely focused on his career. But, first, we see Tommy as a child who spends a span of years communicating with his father via ham radio. His dad is an explorer who is always away on exotic expeditions, and, over time, we witness young Tommy grow disillusioned with his absentee father. Thirty years later, Tommy Popper is divorced with custody of his two kids on alternate weekends. Tommy himself has become a neglectful parent. All he's focused on is securing a partnership in his firm, a position guaranteed him once he bags a primo piece of real estate called the Tavern on the Green.

The status quo gets topsy-turvied when Tommy receives a shipment of penguin to his upscale New York apartment. And then another crate of five more penguins. When his kids come over for a visit, they fall in love with them. From there the plot unfolds in by-the-numbers fashion. You may guess that Tommy Popper turns over a new leaf and becomes a better father, to the detriment of his career. You may conjecture that he becomes smitten with his ex-wife all over again, although how in heck do you fall out of love with Carla Gugino in the first place? There's fun in watching Popper gradually convert his swank Manhattan duplex into a sub-arctic region, just to accomodate the birds and to connect with his kids. Other than the usual thorny family dilemmas that inevitably crop up, the narrative conflict hinges on Clark Gregg's (a.k.a. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Agent Colson) scheming NYC zoo official who covets the six penguins because they're of the rarer gentoo breed.

I was somewhat impressed when I learned thru the bonus features that there's a higher percentage of real penguins in action here than one would assume. (Obviously the scene in which Carrey dances with the penguins is CG-rendered.) Several of the penguins are given enough character traits that they stand out. We learn that "Captain" suffers from flight envy. That "Nimrod" tends to bump into and fall over things. That "Stinky"... well, you can guess his specialty. The others Lovey, Bitey, and Loudy are descriptive enough. The birds' ridiculous antics won me over. Jim Carrey tones his stuff down, as well, and this is a welcome thing. And I did love his compulsively alliterative personal assistant Pippi (Ophelia Lovibond). I recommend this family flick for those who think penguins are funny. But for those who couldn't care less about penguins meaning that there's no buffer or filter thru which the bad bits can be digested there are moments in the movie that simply defy believability (like a penguin hang-gliding) and they well may hike up ye olde blood pressure. MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS is not subtle. You'll see every plot point coming, predict every pratfall. It'll be as if you're watching the addled Mirror Universe version of the MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. But the kids will laugh themselves silly. I did, too.

The DVD's bonus material:

Audio Commentary by director Mark Waters, editor Bruce Green, & visual effects supervisor Richard Hollander

All-New Animated Short: "Nimrod & Stinky's Antarctic Adventure" (00:06:08 minutes)

Gag Reel (00:01:58 minutes)

2 Deleted Scenes with optional commentary from the director, editor, & visual effects supervisor (totaling 00:02:08 minutes)

"Ready for Their Close-Up" A behind-the-scenes look at the real stars of the film: them penguins (00:08:25 minutes)

"Ladies and Gentoomen" SeaWorld San Diego's senior level aviculturist Jessica Perry divulges fun (or informative, anyway) facts about gentoo penguins (00:05:53 minutes)

Original Story Sampler enjoy the first three chapters of the 1938 children's book MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS by Richard and Florence Atwater on which the film was based

Theatrical Trailer

Sneak Peeks at SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD and TOOTH FAIRY 2