Somewhere this concept made sense: “A man inherits six penguins which suddenly make him less of a megalomaniac and more of an understanding, compassionate, philanthropic human being.”
At around the some time, Satan approached Jim Carrey and asked him to make due on that whole “successful career” thing by tap-dancing with six CGI’d penguins to the tune of Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” which doesn’t sound anything like Queen’s “Under Pressure.”
Mr. Popper’s Penguins is loosely based on a 1938 book of the same name. The main difference in these two tales is the main character, Popper, who in the book is a poor, wanderlusting house painter who is relegated to a life of financial distress. Eventually, his acquisition of an initial penguin results in a dozen more penguins that he has to return to the North Pole, thus fulfilling his desire to travel and making him ever-so-much more compassionate.
The new Jim Carrey film seems like another rendition of Liar Liar, where a man separated from his wife and children is so caught up with his own career that he has placed them on the back burner until fate intervenes and places a potential plight on his hands. In Liar Liar it was a birthday wish-come-true. In Mr. Popper’s Penguins, it’s well, penguins.
The disparity between the book and the film is not a terrible sin; instead, this film seems to be an addition to the growing lexicon of movies that implores parents to “spend more time paying attention to their children and less time on their careers,” which is a fine reminder, though I’m not always sure if situations with hilarious results should be the catalysts, but that’s a topic for another time.
At the same time, there is something a touch curious about the direction they’ve taken this film and the poster they’ve released along with it. Actually, there are two posters. One is of Jim Carrey’s face surrounded by six penguin beaks to clearly illustrate Popper’s penguins. The other is a bit curious:
What’s most curious about this poster is that is very closely resembles the poster for The Corporation, a scathing 2003 documentary about the rise of the American corporations and the perfidious nature of their inception and continuation:
Perhaps this was unintentional, but if Carrey’s version of Popper’s Penguins is truly about a man realizing what should be valued in life as opposed to what is perceived as value, then maybe this film will deserve a closer look.
