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.

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.

1 of 5 | From left, Jessica Hynes, Téa Leoni, Will Poulter, Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega and Anthony Carrigan witness the “Death of a Unicorn,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of A24

When Elliot and Ridley stop and get out of the car, they realize the animal is a unicorn. Once their hosts discover the unicorn’s healing properties, they try to capitalize on it.

The rest of the movie ought to be grounded for the magical realism of a unicorn traffic accident to be humorous. Instead, the film makes every other character more outlandish than a unicorn, so none of it is believable, let alone funny.

The Leopolds are parodies of wealthy pharmaceutical executives. Odell (Richard E. Grant) is dying of cancer but desires immortality, not just extending his natural life. His wife, Belinda (Tea Leoni), blatantly postures about philanthropy but ultimately can’t remember whether she’s evacuating or vaccinating needy people.

Their son, Shepard (Will Poulter), is the tech bro who talks about his diversified portfolio of entrepreneurial endeavors that is meaningless. As the night wears on he also indulges in his addictions.

However, Elliot is also a caricature of a widower who can’t connect with his daughter. Ridley isn’t quite as extreme, but an idealistic college student interested in social justice is fairly stereotypical as well.

The whole movie feels like an improv exercise where each actor was given one adjective to describe their character. There are three opportunistic villains, one hapless sap, one common sense youth, two scientists (Stephen Park and Sunita Mani) and two of the Leopolds’ annoyed employees (Anthony Carrigan and Jessica Hynes).

Occasionally, one will deliver an inspired line, but the subsequent dialogue inevitably ruins it. If unicorns existed, seeing real human beings try to handle encountering a magical creature would be funny.

Even promising developments when additional unicorns descend on the Leopold house only lead to more insufferable banter. It becomes a siege on a house full of idiots. Human in-fighting is the point of horror movies like Night of the Living Dead, but that works because the opposing viewpoints are all believable.

Writer-director Alex Scharfman thought of every possible way the Leopolds could try to ingest unicorn. However, the dark comedy of desecrating mythic creatures is undercut by all the silly babbling.

One area in which Death of a Unicorn does succeed is in the visual effects. The unicorns look genuinely beastly, not whimsical, and there is no shot where the viewer cannot believe the unicorn is present.

Alas, it is not even satisfying when unicorns kill these deserving clowns. There is no death violent enough to justify the hours of riffing, and the deaths are pretty graphic.

For a movie with such a unique premise, Death of a Unicorn ultimately relies on familiar stereotypes and tropes. Combined with the miscalculated tone, these unicorns deliver neither joy nor terror.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.