Mr Popper's Penguins (PG) **

Aug 7 2011 by Roz Laws, Sunday Mercury

MR POPPER’S PENGUINS (PG)

HHIII

I CAN count on the fingers of one hand – and still have several fingers left over – the number of films where I’ve enjoyed watching Jim Carrey.

And unfortunately this isn’t one of them.

The reason I’ve given it two stars – which could even stretch to three if you’re under 10 – is that its real star performers are some adorable penguins.

So it’s mildly entertaining in spite of, rather than because of, Mr Carrey.

He plays Tom Popper, a workaholic New York real estate wizard with the ability to persuade people to sell.

“I do deals like this in my sleep,” he says when asked to acquire Central Park’s famous Tavern on the Green restaurant from elderly Mrs Van Gundy (Angela Lansbury).

His British assistant Pippi (Ophelia Lovibond) has the linguistic quirk of preferring to pronounce particular phrases pertaining to P.

Popper sees more of her than his two children and his ex-wife Amanda (Carla Gugino). He lives alone in a very plush apartment, to which his late father, an explorer who was never there for him when he was a boy, sends the one thing he leaves him in his will – a live penguin.

Due to a misunderstanding, the Gentoo penguin is followed by five more, which quickly wreak havoc in his home. But they are a big hit with his children, and he grows rather attached to them, to the point where he doesn’t want zookeeper Clark Gregg to take them away.

So he takes them to play football in a snowy (and remarkably empty) Central Park, and watching them joyfully slide around the Guggenheim Museum is fun. Teaching them to dance, Happy Feet-style, may be an unrealistic step too far.

Inevitably his new friends will teach him sentimental lessons about the importance of family.

The penguins are great to watch, except when they’re farting and defecating. We could really do without the scene where Popper toilet trains them.

It’s not unwatchable, it’s just a perfectly predictable and pretty pitiful product.