Peter Cattaneo...is normally a surer hand with shading, but the script by Coogan’s regular collaborator Jeff Pope...also keeps defaulting to penguin lols – it waddles, it’s cute, repeat – rather than giving the ensemble much to do.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 22, 2025

Adapted from Tom Michell’s autobiographical book, The Penguin Lessons counters the inspirational teacher cliches with a bumbling charm that’s boosted considerably by a first-rate performance from the scene-stealing penguin.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 21, 2025

This movie is enjoyable to watch and has its serious side. At the end of the day, though, it’s mainly about a schoolteacher and a penguin. The political upheaval is there but it is not examined in any detail.

| Apr 21, 2025

Sure, penguins can do an impressive amount. But, despite what The Penguins Lessons implies, that does not extend to singlehandedly defeating fascism.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 18, 2025

While the film offers heartwarming moments and gentle humour, it ultimately plays it safe ­– neither fully embracing its quirky premise or digging into its historica setting.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 18, 2025

Cattaneo has it made as far as Coogan’s palmiped co-star is involved: throw in a few quizzical beak-raised reaction shots and you can’t fail. But the combination of farce, stark political reality and a shameless ahh factor is decidedly awkward.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 17, 2025

The film never hits the heights of charm for which it’s aiming.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 17, 2025

If you do pick up a penguin, you could do worse than experience Michell’s kind of spiritual and moral awakening. Still, the film is thankfully sharper and less cute than it initially appears.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 17, 2025

Weirdly, I felt that this odd film might have worked better if it was just about the lonely man and the penguin without the Argentinian tyranny -- or just about the lonely man and the Argentinian tyranny without the penguin.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 16, 2025

When all is said and done, “The Penguin Lessons” is about finding the courage to stand up to injustice at one’s own peril

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 31, 2025

Despite the danger of G-rated sentimentality, which everyone involved heroically avoids, The Penguin Lessons is a work of surprising depth and subtle, irresistible impact.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 31, 2025

Cattaneo and Pope manage to balance the tone of a dramatic historical depiction of fascism with a charming animal story and their secret weapon is Coogan.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 29, 2025

If you’re not crying at the end, when 'The Penguin Lessons' wants you to cry, then you’re the one who really needs a penguin.

| Mar 29, 2025

Strangely moving and often funny, The Penguin Lessons is winningly acted by Coogan, who has a knack for plumbing the souls of curmudgeons and coming up with hidden gold.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 28, 2025

“The Penguin Lessons” wants to be a thoughtful light entertainment about ideals and courage, but ends up seeming grotesquely misguided.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 28, 2025

Unfortunately, the thin story feels terribly stretched and often doesn’t make sense.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 27, 2025

There is so much warmth and humor in this story that we cannot help feeling touched by the story and maybe even thinking about a penguin of our own.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 27, 2025

The cutesiness doesn't end there, nor the broad but timid messaging, nor the main character's personal growth, all of which the filmmakers apparently regard as sufficient in a film set during a horrific period of dictatorial brutality.

| Mar 27, 2025

Coogan has a witty and dry sense of humor and expressiveness to him that contrasts with Björn Gustafsson delight silliness and lighthearted delivery.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 27, 2025

The rest of the picture is largely winsome and inoffensive.

| Mar 27, 2025