My Penguin Friend: Real-Life Tale of a Brazilian and a Bird is Cute, But Waddles Dramatically
By Karen Gordon
Rating: C
In 2015, a story went viral of an enduring friendship between Joao, a retired Brazilian bricklayer and fisherman, and DinDim, a Magellanic penguin.
Every year, the penguin travelled thousands of miles from his breeding grounds in Patagonia to see his human friend. The story charmed a lot of people furthering a fascination that many have with penguins.
Our affection for these birds has played out on movie screens for years and in many genres: in documentaries, like 2005’s Oscar-winning documentary March of the Penguins, (which inspired a sequel and a mockumentary Farce of the Penguins), feature films like Mr. Popper’s Penguins with Jim Carrey, and a series of animated films, notably 2006’s Oscar winner for best animated film Happy Feet.
So, it was perhaps inevitable that that this particular true story would inspire a movie.
Jean Reno and bird buddy
My Penguin Friend, directed by Brazil’s David Schurmann, uses the story of Joao and his penguin friend as the jumping off point, the inspiration for a feature film. And that comes with a challenge: The story about a penguin bonding with a human, and then returning year after year to hang out with him is fascinating, but not necessarily filled with the kind of dramatic tension that feature films usually require.
There is no doubt that the intention behind the film My Penguin Friend was to make an uplifting all-ages movie about the redeeming power of nature on the human spirit, mixed with a bit of a lesson on the lifecycle of this species of penguins.
But in creating a storyline, the filmmakers have also created dramatic turns that don’t always track. And that is where the film falters. Clumsy storytelling, and what feels like an attempt to ‘Disney-fy’ the story, ends up in a film that - while it is heartwarming and has its charm - ends up being an underwhelming mish-mash.
One of the film’s precious few pluses is the casting of French actor Jean Reno. He stars as Joao, who lives in a small house with his wife wife Maria (Adriana Barraza) outside of a small village on the Brazilian shoreline. Joao is a retired fisherman and a broken man. He has never recovered from the accidental death of his young son, for which he blames himself.
One day, Joao sees a penguin struggling in the shallow water at the shoreline. He pulls the oil-covered bird out of the water, and brings it into his house where he feeds it and begins to clean the oil off of it. Revived, the penguin takes to Joao and his little house like a long lost famlly member. And Joao, who has seemed lost, not only begins to come out of his shell, but is delighted.
Word spreads among the fisherman and the people in the local village. A young local girl names it DinDim, and the penguin becomes a local celebrity, and then, finally, an international one when a reporter catches hold of the story. But hold that thought for a minute. There’s a second part to the story.
Dindim hangs out with Joao, gets healthy. He wanders around Joao and Maria’s house and in the small nest that Joao has created for him outside. And then, one day, Joao wakes up to find little penguin footprints in the sand leading to the ocean and Dindim is gone, at least from Brazil, and maybe forever.
Dindim returns to his home turf in Patagonia, Argentina, where his species mate and breed, and to the handsome nest he’s built for himself there. (Yes, Dindim has two houses)
In Patagonia, a research team sees Dindim’s return, and notes his particular personality traits: his comfort with people and his intelligence and ingenuity. They tag him, and watch his comings and goings as much as possible in a colony of penguins.
When the time to migrate comes, Dindim, waddles into the ocean in Patagonia, and then back out again in front of Joao’s house in Brazil. There, he once again, to the delight of Joao and Maria, makes himself at home for months on end, hanging out with his human friend.
When the story of Dindim hits the worldwide media, the Patagonian-based research team is able to use his tag number to confirm that it is indeed Dindim, travelling back to spend time with the man who rescued him.
If there is an understanding of a penguin’s emotional life, or a hypothesis about what compelled the penguin to continue to go back to see Joao, we don’t really find out. The movie isn’t interested in that.
That’s not a bad thing. To its credit the movie doesn’t anthropomorphize DinDim. He’s a penguin who does penguin things.
The film also mostly used real penguins to play Dindim (10 penguins are listed in the credits). There’s also some animatronics, but you'd be hard pressed to spot them. The film has some excellent natural sequences, giving us a sense of the world of the Magellanic penguins without making it feel like a science class—not that there’s anything wrong with science classes.
And that sense of respect for nature is reflected in the character of Joao, who, as played by Reno, clearly loves the bird and is emotionally engaged. He tells anyone who asks that it’s up to the penguin whether he’ll come again next year. We get that there's a bond there, and that it’s important and transformational for Joao. But he respects Dindim as a wild creature.
Reno is a wonderful actor and an asset to the movie holding down the emotional center of the film quite beautifully.
For sure, the film is heartwarming, and it is fun to watch Dindim waddle around and engage with the human world, adopting Joao as a family member.
But that’s not quite enough to overcome the film’s problems. That business of adding tension and drama comes in the form of a boilerplate plot with some arguably improbable seeming turns aimed at adding a sense of jeopardy. But it just ends up feeling forced.
As well, My Penguin Friend begins with a tragedy, leaving Joao annd Maria with an emotional burden that feels too heavy even in the face of the fun of watching a penguin make itself at home.
My Penguin Friend. Directed by David Schurmann. Stars Jean Reno and Adriana Barraza. In theatres August 16.