2.5/5 stars

Nick Cheung Ka-fai is one of the most prominent active Hong Kong actors to have dabbled in directing, and in doing so has proved himself a talented visual stylist and world builder with a penchant for the dark and supernatural.

But the main reason Cheung is not known as a visionary filmmaker is that, despite all his stylish visuals, he is a clumsy storyteller who could not fashion a convincing narrative to save his life.

The nominal lead in his latest effort, Peg O’ My Heart, is Dr Man (Terrance Lau Chun-him), an unorthodox psychiatrist at a public hospital who has time and again broken protocol and taken patients’ cases into his own hands, interfering in their private lives to get results.

Man’s interactions with his doting assistant, senior nurse Donna (Rebecca Zhu Chenli), and his frustrated but protective superior – the hospital director played by Geoffrey Wong Chi-hung – make for amusing viewing that would not be out of place in a quirky sitcom.

Shailene Woodley, actor and environmentalist, was featured in Outside magazine late last year beneath the headline “Here’s What It’s Like to Go Camping With Shailene Woodley.”

Actor Lucas Bravo looked like he could have told that same story as he and Woodley stepped out in Paris — she with a messy half-up, half-down ’do, no makeup and loose jeans and he with a beanie, fleece-lined jacket and forest-green sweater.

They looked ready for roasting marshmallows, which is appropriate because they are apparently sweet on each other. The Parisian PDA established their new coupledom.

According to her Outside interview, 33-year-old Woodley is an old hand at camping thanks to family outings at Leo Carrillo State Park in Malibu and other California coastal haunts. The “Divergent” star is a climate advocate, as Outside related, having worked with nonprofits and NGOs and taken part in the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

She told the news outlet she’d had to pick up a new sleeping pad at REI: “I left my old one with my ex.” It’s not clear the ex to whom she is referring, but she famously dated and was engaged to NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers — another brawny, bearded man. The former Green Bay Packer and “Big Little Lies” star broke off their engagement in February 2022.

Bravo, 37, plays swoon-worthy chef Gabriel on “Emily in Paris” and is a Paris denizen. But he talked with The Times in a September interview about his five years in Los Angeles as a struggling actor following a semester in law school.

“Every day, I would ask a different friend for a couple of bucks and go to Taco Bell and get the 99 cent cheesy double beef burrito,” he said.

Perhaps Woodley and Bravo will cozy up in L.A. next, grab a burrito and head over to Leo Carrillo.

There are two things that can make any movie better: Steve Coogan and penguins.

Fortunately, and not surprisingly considering its title, The Penguin Lessons features both. Well, at least one penguin, who goes by the name Juan Salvador. But he’s more than enough. He’s Coogan’s best onscreen partner since Rob Brydon in the Trip movies.

Loosely based on a memoir by Tom Michell, the film takes place in 1976 in Buenos Aires, where teacher Tom (Coogan) arrives to teach English to teenage students at a tony private school. His timing wasn’t exactly fortuitous, as not long after he gets there the country is rocked by a military coup, with people disappearing subsequently.

Not that any of the tumult affects Tom, who soon embarks on a weekend getaway to Uruguay with his Swedish colleague (Bjorn Gustafsson, priceless), where he enjoys a flirtation with a local woman. Walking together on the beach, they encounter an oil slick and the bodies of several dead penguins. One, however, is still alive. Tom is eager to move on. “There’s nothing we can do,” he says with mock solemnity. “You can’t interfere with nature.”

But she implores him to help, and Tom, trying to impress her, agrees to take the penguin back to his hotel room and clean him up. Not only does this attempt at seduction not work, but Tom finds himself stuck with a penguin that won’t leave him, even after he throws him back into the ocean. In one of the film’s many implausibilities that you just have to go with, he smuggles the bird to Argentina and hides him in his on-campus apartment to avoid the watchful eyes of the school’s officious headmaster (Jonathan Pryce).

It’s not hard to guess what happens next. Tom, whose cynicism has already been well established, finds himself warming up to the adorable Magellanic penguin (I cop to knowing this from the press notes), working hard to procure fish to feed him and even bringing him to the classroom as a teaching aide. Which naturally does wonders for his bored students, who take a renewed interest in their lessons. And for Tom himself, who previously snuck off for naps during classes but now finds himself teaching with fresh vigor.

The trailer for The Penguin Lessons makes it look like a cutesy comedy, something that might have easily been called “The Dead Penguin’s Society.” The film is that, to a large degree. But it also attempts something more ambitious with a major plot element involving the disappearance of Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio), the granddaughter of school housekeeper Maria (Vivian El Jaber), seized off the street by government figures right in front of Tom, who’s too terrified to intervene.

We eventually learn the reason for Tom’s hard-boiled indifference, involving a tragic incident from his past. With his appreciation for life newly restored by his feathered friend, he soon finds himself in the unlikely position of political activist, using Juan Salvador to strike up a conversation with one of the men who took Sofia and winding up spending a night in jail, beaten up for his troubles.

The film doesn’t fully succeed in blending its disparate tones, but under the careful direction of Peter Cattaneo (an old hand at this sort of feel-good material, thanks to such previous efforts as The Full Monty and Military Wives), it emerges as an engaging delight from start to finish. That’s partially thanks to the canny screenplay by frequent Coogan collaborator Jeff Pope (Philomena, Stan & Ollie) and partially, no make that majorly, to the superb performance by Coogan, whose expert deadpan comic timing and delivery make the film laugh-out-loud funny at times.

The Penguin Lessons also proves unexpectedly moving, its emotional manipulations fully forgivable. By the time it ends with home-movie footage of the real-life Juan Salvador happily swimming in the school’s pool, you’ll have fully succumbed to its charms.