“The Penguin Lessons” (2025) adapts British teacher Tom Michell’s memoir with the same title, and the movie is dedicated to his wife. Steve Coogan plays the author during his first-year teaching English at St. George’s School in Argentina. He is not invested in getting to know his coworkers, being good at his job or bemoaning the military coup. When the unrest results in a week off, he ventures to Uruguay where he saves a penguin, later named Juan Salvador (Baba and Richard), who was dying and covered in oil on the beach, but he cannot get rid of him. Even though animals are not allowed, he brings him back to work, and Juan Salvador changes everyone’s life.
Coogan usually comes in two flavors of movies, human interest movies set during a certain era, i.e. rarely contemporary, or “The Trip” franchise where he plays an actor on a road trip in the present time. “The Penguin Lessons” gives Coogan the opportunity to dabble in both. Michell just wants to rest, have a good time and survive though his feathers are not ruffled as he gets a rough welcome with guns pointed to his head and blunt force trauma in the first act alone, but it is not as violent as it sounds. The hostile reception reflects how everyone’s nerves are frayed. Michell later claims to hate fascism, but it barely registers on his radar. He reveals his sympathies by not tattling on Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio), a nineteen-year-old housekeeper, who has a political disagreement with the more radical local fishmonger, but if reported, both would be disappeared.
“The Penguin Lessons” has a lot to accomplish: redeem Michell, reform the class of mostly entitled bullies, cover Argentinian history during 1976 and make the school better than the world outside its gates instead of reflecting it. A British feel-good film is never going to reach the heights of an unflinching film like “The Hole in the Fence” (2022), a Mexican Polish film which shows how school traditions reinforces the values and practices of the current status quo to ensure that it survives into perpetuity. Here, there is a “Lord of the Flies” element in the depiction of school dynamics. Many of the boys are cruel, and they are merciless to a heavier child, Diego (David Herrero), whom they treat as they perceive the government treating its opposition, i.e. torturing him. The pupils mostly come from wealthy families and/or people who are high level figures in the government, and Headmaster Timothy Buckle (Jonathan Pryce) is only interested in keeping them happy and upping scores, not teaching them how to be good people, i.e. anything that could be perceived as a rebuke of their families.
Cut to the most important character after Michell: Juan Salvador. It is interesting how 2025 seems to be the year where animals play pivotal roles in movies about fighting evil: “Mickey 17” (2025), “Death of a Unicorn” (2025), “Checkpoint Zoo” (2025) and now “The Penguin Lessons.” Because animals are a part of our lives, but live according to their own code of conduct, animals’ serve as the arbiter of justice or function as a Rorschach test regarding which people are “good.” Baba and Richard, real, not CGI penguins, deserve all the fish and objects that they desire and are possibly the best actors in the film. Baba and Richard are adorable and will waddle and shimmy their way into your hearts. From the audible noises that they make to the way that they mimic Michell’s movement patterns, it is easy to project the idea that Juan Salvador has chosen Michell and later everyone in that school as his people. Everyone in the film goes through some sort of loss, but none more than Juan Salvador, who loses his community because of human carelessness. He lends a sympathetic ear to anyone looking for a nonjudgmental listener to express their issues. As the literal lowest rung on the ladder, he becomes a metaphor, which the movie explicitly belabors. The way that people treat him reflects their character. The primary concern is that he will get thrown into a dark hole in bad conditions like the “disappeared.”
Quick Argentinian lesson. Don’t confuse “The Penguin Lessons” with “I’m Still Here” (2024), which is set in Brazil. Fun fact: Jonathan Pryce played President Juan Perón in “Evita” (1996), a titular reference to Perón’s second wife, Eva. While Perón did some good, Argentina is also famous for being a refuge for Nazi Germans after World War II, which is reflected in Perón’s authoritarian administration of government, but not enough to satisfy the Catholic Church and military so military coups often interrupted his presidential terms. Perónists divided into left and right camps, and the right started disappearing people, i.e. extrajudicial kidnappings (it is not an arrest if it is not done legally with due process) and executions. When he died, his third wife, Isabel Peron, succeeded Perón as President. The 1976 coup ended her presidency and resulted in her exile to Spain where she still lives. Unfortunately, fascist governments that undermine rule of law often disappear people without restricting it to terrorists. Just expressing a different opinion can get one locked up. Thank God that could not happen here! (Insert meme of Natalie Portman as Queen Padme.
“The Penguin Lessons” spends so much time showing sadistic boys and jumpy men with weapons that when Michell introduces Juan Salvador into Argentina, some moviegoers may be concerned that Juan Salvador will meet as bad a fate as the disappeared, but those concerns are unfounded, and no one shows serial killer tendencies. (Serial killers are renown for starting their sanguine careers with torturing animals.) While the movie could have introduced a lot more comedic scenarios about the inherent absurdity of hiding a bird the size of a small child, and Michell does his best to do so initially, when confronted, Michell is frank and forthright about having a penguin, which lowers the temperature in the room and establishes immediate trust and interest. He does not lie, and it becomes normal for Michell and others to care for the most vulnerable because of meeting Juan Salvador, who becomes a gateway to caring for others like the disappeared.
It is unfortunate that “The Penguin Lessons” is not going to be one of those films that you watch and tuck away as something that happened in the past as opposed to a film that is prescient about the issues that are being faced today. Michell and every character are scared and feel powerless to act when they see evil affect their quotidian lives. By caring for Juan Salvador, Michell becomes empowered to act even though he knows that he could get hurt, and his actions may not make a difference. While the film pulls punches on the enormity of what Argentina was like in 1976, and by using a British outsider as the protagonist, this movie falls into the old-fashioned category of films that make audiences sympathize with an underdog group by making them supporting characters in their own stories, it is a true story, and apparently the entire world is trying to regress so maybe the movies are responding accordingly. Coogan ends up making a political statement that dissolute layabouts need to try and help make the world a better place. The effort strengthens the community, which eventually topples tyranny.
The British are deft at taking a potentially controversial theme and making it universal and relatable by humanizing the concept with an ensemble cast and injecting humor. In “Snow White” (2025), it was woodland creatures, and now it is seemingly ordinary guys without ambitions who are examples of the cinematic phenomenon, “If they can do it, what is your excuse?!?” line of movies calling audiences to stand up and act. “The Penguin Lessons” is a sweet, funny movie that is relatively suitable for children when adults want to drag their kids somewhere but cannot stand the thought of watching a kid’s movie. It also should attract older audiences who are like moths to a flame whenever a mainstream Brit movie is released. Will it affect audiences enough to apply those lessons after they leave the theater?
