[Movie Monday] Mr. Popper's Penguin

Movie: Mr. Popper’s Penguins

Genre: Comedy/Family

Welcome to second Movie Monday of the week!

Second spotlight of the day goes to Mr. Popper’s Penguins, and in this movie, Jim Carrey stars as Tom Popper who is the Mr. Popper in the title!

This movie is based on a book that has been out for who knows how long, and I remember when I last read this book, it was back when I was in elementary school in late 1990’s to extremely early 2000’s. And when I reread the book after the movie adaptation came out, the book was still as good of a read as it were when I read it as an elementary schooler, and the movie adaptation was, to my surprise, REALLY good!

Mr. Popper’s Penguin revolves around a man named Tom Popper. As a kid, his father would travel all over the word, and they would have radios, like the ones used by the pilots, to contact one another whenever they are away. And wherever Tom’s father went, he would send Tom a small gift – Such as snow globe. Growing up all his life, he never really had a father figure around to show him the ropes that when he himself got married and had kids, he grew distant from his own family that it had eventually led him in a divorce with seeing his kids only during the weekends.

And having to be a real estate entrepreneur, Tom does whatever it takes in terms of gaining more and more land out in the city for his company, which actually allows him to gain a say in whether or not his name will go on up on the company’s name to say he is one of the partners. The only thing that’s keeping him from having his name go on up is a nice, small restaurant called Tavern on the Green, which would have to be torn down for something completely new to be built for the development of the company. Another thing that Tom comes to discover is that his father has passed away during a trip to Antarctica, and he is promised to have a package delivered to him as a last gift that his father has got for him.

A week later, a wooden crate comes to his doorsteps and Tom discovers what appears to be a realistic stuffed animal of a Gentoo penguin. What he fails to realize is that there was a note from his father that came with it, which floats down to below a table right by door. He calls the person who have originally contacted him about the penguin to take back the penguin that had been delivered to his doorstep, the man tells Tom that he’ll send five more due to terrible connections over the phone and misunderstands what Tom is trying to tell the other man. When the other five penguins arrives later on and Tom opens up and set them out on the floor one by one

It’s not long before Tom comes to a realization that the penguins are actually real life penguins, and it’s his job to take care of them while trying to call all sorts of pest controls to get rid of the penguins. And when his ex-wife reminds him that it’s their son’s birthday, he tries to figure something out to buy himself some time to try and find if not run out to buy a gift for his son, both of their children find the penguins inside. It’s then that places Tom in a situation where he can’t quite get rid of the penguins just yet, and it soon leads him into caring for the animals so much that he ends up becoming attached to all six of the penguins. Caring for them eventually leads him into losing focus on his job, which eventually leads him into losing his job. At the cost of his job, he slowly comes to a realization what truly matters in his life, and what really should have mattered all along was his family and it was his family that he should have been giving all his time and love to rather than to his work.

This may not be your typical Jim Carrey movie when having to read the book before even watching the movie. However, once I watched the movie, I could very well see exactly how it actually could be a type of movie he would be in. There are a lot of great family comedy movies out there to watch, and Mr. Popper’s Penguins is one of them. Laughter and heartwarming moments all around, give Mr. Poppers and his penguins a shot!