My Penguin Friend (#589)


I feel obligated to preface this review with the facts that I am a sucker for human interest stories if they are well done and am an incurable romantic when it comes to love stories.  I also am a cryer and used to do it often in the past.  You should also be aware that I rarely know what any movie is about before seeing it.  Today, I was more than pleasantly surprised and absolutely delighted to watch MY PENGUIN FRIEND, based on a true story that I had never read or seen before.  A humble Brazilian fisherman (I say humble because he and his fellow fisherman work from rowboats) takes his absolutely charming young son out in the boat for his birthday.  The bot is capsized and the boy is lost at sea.  Uh oh, I thought.  This is going to be too tragic to take because what came before were scenes of an absolutely wonderful family.  The father, played magnificently by French actor Jean Reno, is despondent and literally pulls out of the world despite efforts by his wife (who seems to have aged thirty years overnight and also wonderfully played).  His life changes dramatically when he rescues a little penguin, covered in oil from an oil spill, takes it home, cleans it and becomes devoted to it, to the annoyance of his wife, who eventually becomes fond of it.  It follows him everywhere and seems to understand what he's saying to it. A young girl in the village calls the penguin BinBim, and the name sticks.  One day, BinBim goes into the sea and doesn't come back.  What he does is swim thousands of miles to where he came from in Patagonia, Argentina.  He is observed as being different from other penguins by a team of marine biologists working with penguins, and they tag him.  When the mass of penguins enter the ocean to make their annual swim north, BinBim heads back to Brazil and his friend.  I cried several times in this movie, but I'm not going to reveal anymore.  You should make an effort to see it, even if you're a cynic.  83% of critics and 96% of audiences joined me in praise of this one.  Finally saw a picture I really liked.

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