“Mr. Popper’s Penguins” is in part a tale of Tavern on the Green. So — it’s a dis aster movie?
No. Instead, the chintz- tastic Central Park tourist magnet helps save the soul of Popper (Jim Carrey), a slick real-estate dealer who, because of his careerism, is a divorced father of two who barely knows his kids — they’re being raised by their mom (Carla Gugino).
His empty nest is filled with crates sent to him by his explorer father just before his demise, making Popper papa to half a dozen penguins. They clash with his immaculate Park Avenue bachelor lair, so after considering some penguin recipes he arranges to have them sent to the Central Park Zoo. That’s when his sulky kids show up and decide that the penguins are awesome and maybe Dad isn’t so bad either. So he keeps them.
The movie is a surprisingly touching, low-key ballad of middle-aged male regret disguised as a kiddie comedy replete with poop and fart jokes and soccer balls launched at Popper’s crotch.
As Popper figures out how to keep the penguins calm (they like Charlie Chaplin movies, recognizing a kindred spirit), the story becomes an extended metaphor for how a cool guy gradually learns to give up his groovy titanium solo existence and accept the uncontrollable ooze and whine of family life. It’s an avian “About a Boy” at 28 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the temperature at which Popper keeps his apartment while he brings in snow and goes slightly mad waiting for the penguins’ eggs to hatch.
Meanwhile, at the office, Popper is scheming to buy Tavern on the Green, the trophy deal his bosses want before they will agree to add his name to their partnership. The restaurant’s owner (Angela Lansbury) refuses to sell, though — she is looking for something besides money. So is his ex, whom he starts delicately asking for dates. “You like Mom,” one of his kids teases him, in one of many endearing little ironic moments, and when his adolescent daughter lights up while trying on a new dress, he says, simply, “I made that.” Who has ever expressed parental pride more succinctly?
Carrey, who was brilliant in last year’s “I Love You Phillip Morris,” is an inspired choice to play this role. Though the movie begins like one of those wretched Robin Williams Disney comedies (and is dotted with bits of broken slapstick), it leverages the nastiness that has always underlaid his inexhaustible ingratiation. Carrey isn’t just a sultan of smarm when he keeps saying, “Yabsolutely.” There is frosty hostility there that movies like “The Cable Guy” never quite managed to wrangle.
Carrey is less ideal to do the warm-dad transition that Williams would have handled expertly, yet the script (which clankingly shifts gears from writing style to writing style) delivers its best stuff in these scenes, not in such frantic moments as when the penguins bust loose and slide down the helix of the Guggenheim during a fancy party. When his ex-wife falls on him while skating at Wollman Rink and asks what happened, he says, “I think we just hit a rough patch.”
Whenever a corporate big shot accepts a major promotion, he never takes the podium to announce that he’s looking forward to spending less time with his family. Without being too blunt about it, Popper and his penguins waddle into a happy point about work and money versus life and family. As Popper himself notices, his and the penguins’ saga gets so endearing that it could have been narrated by Morgan Freeman.