Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

zkonedog When one sees the face of Jim Carrey on the cover of a film, one expects a certain type of movie-going experience and a certain type of comedy. If you are looking for that Carrey brand of comedy in this one, you will be severely disappointed. However, taken as simply a family-friendly flick, "Mr. Popper's Penguins" is a fun little effort that can be enjoyed by quite literally the entire family.For a basic plot summary, "Popper" focuses on the life of one Mr. Popper (Carrey), who is completely absorbed in his work and therefore has little time for his divorced wife (Carla Gugino) or two young children. When his recently deceased father sends Mr. Popper a gift of six penguins, however, they become equal parts blessing and curse as he tries to manage the pesky birds while at the same time bringing his family together around them.There are a lot of cute things in this movie for the kiddies, including the hi-jinks of the penguins themselves, a simplistic love story that even the really young ones will understand, and a secretary who is fixated on the letter "P", providing some interesting humor throughout. The children will easily get sucked into this one right away, and it does just enough to keep the adults from dozing off too.Though I was warned that this movie was "no good" by a huge Jim Carrey fan in my family, I watched it with my younger sister and enjoyed the experience. You just have to go into with the mindset that it isn't really a comedy, at least not by the traditional Carrey standards. It is family- focused from beginning to end, kind of reminding me of "Even Almighty" and its performance from Steve Carrell.Simply put, "Mr. Popper's Penguins" isn't anything to blow you away, but if you are looking for a good "family movie night" effort that won't offend anyone and might even get a few laughs along the way, then this one is a sure-fire bet.

pyrocitor How tolerant are you, dear viewer? You may wish for a light, breezy, nostalgic callback to the days when animal comedies proliferated (the 90s), propelled by everyone's favourite rubber-faced funny man (also from the 90s). You'd tolerate a lot for a return to those halcyon days, you beam. A nice, wholesome film for your children to delight to, to fill the household with a glow as heartwarming as the setting is chilly. You can practically hear Morgan Freeman's dulcet tones plucking your heartstrings. Don't worry - there's a gag about him in here too. They've got your back. But reflect for a moment. Are you really tolerant enough to stomach the kind of dolefully saccharine wish-fulfilment fantasy that blissfully reunites divorced parents through the power of friendship, and has the youth of today enjoying Charlie Chaplin? The kind of Hollywood whimsy that has Jim Carrey dancing with a farting CGI penguin? This particular brand of sinister silliness that has the gall to cast the delightful Clark Gregg as a villainous zookeeper, and has Carrey (cheerily) nearly murder him by locking him in a freezer - all accompanied by the twinkling of a musical score that reprises "Ding dong, the witch is dead" as its primary leitmotif? Wait - come back, heartstrings Morgan! Where are you going?At its best, Mr. Popper's Penguins is harmless, instantly forgettable child-friendly distraction. At its worst, it is a devious, sinister parable celebrating the mid-life crises and/or mental breakdowns of skeezy realtors as heartwarming epiphanies. The moral of the story, evidently, is that bribery can work to win back the love of your estranged children, but their love is purely conditional upon you being a vehicle for destructive animal hijinx, or the gusto with which you encourage them to pursue harmful relationships with, like, OMG, totally gross boys. Things never go full Furry Vengeance, but we're in the Fraser zone here folks. Tread carefully. A penguin even gets to fly. Aww. Dreams do come true. For some reason, Angela Lansbury and Philip Baker Hall are here, to frown a lot and be the butt of their fair share of old people jokes. Take comfort in the fact that their paycheques probably bought them lovely vacations that allowed them to shake off the memories of this dross. It's not all for naught - there's the occasional clever or charming bit (Carrey's alliterative assistant is an always amiable, acquiescing acquaintance), and Carrey himself is so inherently charismatic that he almost pulls it off. He even works in ad-libs referencing the Doors and the Beatles, for some reason, which is almost enough to give him the all-clear. But then there's that closing sequence: a long take tracking shot of Carrey in soft-focus lighting, smirking, accompanied by the most rousing "ding dong, the witch is dead" refrain yet, as he passes by each of the other characters of the film - his conquests - who all grin at him in braindead subjugation to his reformed Hollywood saviour prowess. Nope, that reaching sound you just heard wasn't from the farting penguin. In conclusion: there's a great clip from Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, where he existentially, poetically, narrates the plight of a single penguin, maniacally determined to flee its compatriots in favour of a suicide mission into the interior of Antarctica. "This deranged penguin," Herzog intones solemnly, accompanied by the dirge of Gregorian chants, as we watch this little bird scuttle off towards certain death, likely too stupid to know better. Watch that instead of Mr. Popper's Penguins. -4/10

Ed-Shullivan MAY CONTAIN SPOILERSI trust the producers were not expecting Mr. Popper's Penguins to be a box office smash, because if they were, they neglected to mix the full recipe ingredients for a block buster movie. Yes, they included one of the major star comedians, Jim Carrey. Yes, they gave us a good background story of a young boy named Tommy Popper who listened endlessly and intently to his CB (citizen band) radio patiently waiting for the rare occasion his world traveler father would reach out to him from afar on the CB radio and tell young Tommy Popper about his current adventure he was on from the four corners of the world. But Tommy grew up as a lonely boy and then 30 years later we see Tommy (now an adult Jim Carrey) as a successful real estate mogul, who is separated from his wife and two kids because he just does not have time for any of his own family. Like father, like son.Before Tommy's father passes away he sends adult Tommy two crates from the Antartica containing six adorable Penguins. There is also a letter included in one of the the crates which Tommy inadvertently does not see fall under the hall table until quite some time later. Again the producers did a good job with making the penguins look real in all their animated scenes. The penguins bathroom breaks were exceptionally cute and appropriate for all age audiences including young children. I saw the movie at home, but I would imagine any child between the age of 3-13 would be howling of laughter with the antics of the six penguins, who were individually named in a manner that resembles their predominant and individual behavior, similar to the Disney's Seven Dwarfs.Jim Carrey's estranged wife Amanda (played by Carla Gugino) has moved on with her life and she has a new man she is interested in. Their two kids, a girl and a boy have not spent a lot of time with their father who is always too busy with his real estate deals. I anticipated I may have heard Cat Stevens 1971 classic song "Father and Son" contained somewhere in the film, but it was missing, as was a story line that the audience could commit to believing in.Angela Lansbury plays Mrs. Van Gundy the sole owner of the Tavern on the Green restaurant that adult Tommy Poppers bosses assign him to acquire for their new development plans. We find out later that little Tommy used to eat at the restaurant with his father on the rare occasion he came to town to visit with his son. Introducing Angela Lansbury was an attempt to make it more like the 1971 Disney classic she previously starred in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. It is worth a watch for Jim Carrey's interaction with the adorable penguins. The animators did a fantastic job of making the penguins irresistibly entertaining. But let's not fool ourselves. Mr. Poppers Penguins is a good movie that is sure to entertain children between the ages of 3-13 but when I mentioned the film was missing some key ingredients I am referring to that Disney magic. Mr. Poppers Penguins is simply lacking that warm story line and the charm of any of the Disney classics even with Ms. Lansbury in a supporting role, and the advanced CGI animatronics available today.

vornado11 Before I start, I'd just like to say that movies don't necessarily have to follow the source material to be good. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The Neverending Story, Conan the Barbarian(the original movie), and most Disney animated movies are good examples of fun movies that are basically the stories in-name-only. As long as there's a good creative team behind it, a movie can be great even without following the source. ...But then, there are movies that obviously don't have anything to do with the source material, that whoever produced it just said "Ooh, this thing has a nice title to it. Turn out a script in two weeks, get some actors who will work for scale, and put as much awkward symbolism and/or gross-out humor in it as you can. People don't have enough to do on a Saturday, so they'll see it no matter how much it sucks and we'll get money off of it! Genius!" Blood & Chocolate, Inspector Gadget, and everything by Uwe Boll are all movies that have fallen prey to greedy producers, becoming horrible adaptations of terrific stories.In case you haven't guessed yet, Mr Popper's Penguins is one of them.If you've never heard of it, Mr Popper's Penguins is a 1938 children's book about a man who inherits penguins and decides to put on a show with them, traveling the vaudeville circuit and becoming household names. The writing's nothing special, but the ideas and some of the humor is really great and would have made for a fun movie. Throw Jim Carrey in the mix and you would have the ingredients for an incredible family movie! I was excited to see this... but now all it does is make me mad as hell!The movie has absolutely NOTHING to do with the book. The setting is wrong, the characters are wrong, the story is wrong, the message is wrong, everything is wrong! Like I said before, I wouldn't mind so much if they were replaced with good ideas, but they're NOT! The story in a nutshell is that Mr Popper, played by Jim Carrey, is a divorced, highly paid, white-collar worker who gets a penguin as a posthumous gift from his late father, who, as we learn from a poor opening, never spent enough time with him. By accident, he receives 5 more and he has to find a way to live with them in the middle of New York. Hijinks ensure. ...Actually, not really, because this movie is blander than Kevin Costner eating Styrofoam on wheat toast...The entire movie is a contrivance, using every single tired cliché. The dad is divorced but still has a loving family that visits him, he's almost at the top of his game but is suddenly dragged down by something close to him, he needs to learn that family comes before business, the animal sidekicks do things that are cute, funny, and impossible for normal animals to do normally, a penguin wants to fly, and so on and so forth. We've seen all these ideas in practically every family film of the last decade! We know what's going to happen, we know how it will end, and there are no surprises or clever lines throughout!How are the characters? BORING! Yes, even Jim Carrey, one of the funniest people of the big screen! Normally, he's a very flexible, very over-the-top guy who puts as much energy into his roles as he possibly can. But here, he always looks like he's restrained, like someone off-screen is constantly telling him to not steal the spotlight from the penguins. As a result, we have a very boring Carrey who seems to frown and act depressed the entire movie. Besides Carrey, we have Ophelia Lovibond, whose only role is to perform alliteration with "P" words, Clark Gregg who plays a sleazy bad guy that only gets 5 minutes of screen time, and Angela Lansbury(yes, THE Angela Lansbury) who is much too talented to be in this movie.Let's talk about the humor. The humor is about as juvenile as it can get. All jokes are aimed at kids, and the producers are praying that penguins screaming at a picture of a shark will get the kids laughing. And that's the height of the humor here. There is a lot, a LOT, of gross-out jokes in this movie. One of the penguins, named Stinky appropriately enough, constantly breaks wind throughout the movie. Oh, and there's a two-minute scene of Popper holding the penguins over a toilet and... let's just say it's time to refill your popcorn here. The humor is bottom-of-the-barrel generic kid movie stuff that will probably leave anyone over 3-years-old groaning.Well, maybe the story is good? NO! Without giving much away, the story is a contrived mess without logic or creative thought. For example, when Carrey reads that penguins like cold environments, does he buy a freezer? No, he just opens the windows, letting snow and ice flood a very expensive New York penthouse. His care of the penguins becomes more and more of an obsession throughout the movie, to the point where it actually gets scary and he neglects his family, his job, and any sense of other responsibility. The whole plot is based around the requirement that everybody be an idiot. Nobody thinks, nobody plans, they just do, creating unlikable characters and unlikable settings.Overall, this is one of the WORST MOVIES I HAVE EVER SEEN! There is no thought, no creativity, no effort, NOTHING! I am AMAZED at how lazy this movie is! It was clearly only made to make money for the studio or to provide a way for younger audiences to shut up for 95 minutes. My recommendation: Give your kids the book, give the Goodwill store the DVD, and watch one of the several dozen GOOD movies Jim Carrey has made.