Watch Mr. Popper's Penguins For Free

Let's be realistic.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Jim Carrey is Tom Popper, a New York City businessman who has put almost all of his life into his work instead of family. One day he gets a call saying that his father has died, but he left him a gift: penguins. Carrey carries this movie and saves it from being a disaster with his physical slapstick. It's the kind of film that proves that a small story can be much more meaningful than a larger one. The cinematography is stark and bare, with only the soundtrack adding some effect. From an artistic standpoint, there were some plot elements and character developments I didn't think were totally needed. They do however drive the story, which seemed to be their purpose, so I can accept them.

Mr Popper's Penguins reviewI'll start this review with a bit of info about the movie. It was inspired by the classic, award winning book also named 'Mr Popper's Penguins,' which will make children laugh just as much as the film. Twentieth Century Fox made the movie, and placed Mark Waters as the director. Cast included the immature yet rather funny Jim Carrey, Carla Gugino and Angela Lansbury. Essentially, the storyline is about a successful New York City real-estate agent (Jim Carrey) who gets a shocking inheritance from his previously neglectful father who died. His present-a penguin. Later in the week, he receives 5 more penguins and just as he plans to give them to Central Park Zoo his son arrives and believes they're birthday present for him! To keep his children happy he  promises to keep the animals in his apartment, however he is supposed to be doing his work. Instead, he takes the duty of penguin caretaker as he develops a growing fondness and attachment to them. The movie is really sweet, but it may be to the point of cringing for some. The predictable 'all work, no play' businessman, who after a revelation realises 'less work, more play' is better for parenting. Still, the film is surprisingly entertaining and would have the kids giggling for days over the slapstick shenanigans, penguin choreography and Carrey's comedy. Who knows, it may become a family favourite because even for older viewers it's a guilty pleasure. RATING: 5.0/10Best parts: Snow football in Central Park Penguins being glued to Charlie Chaplin Adorable Pippi (Ophelia Lovibond) who always speaks in alliterations of the letter P, just as you think it gets old it becomes funny again-much like the movie

Before I start, I'd just like to say that movies don't necessarily have to follow the source material to be good. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The Neverending Story, Conan the Barbarian(the original movie), and most Disney animated movies are good examples of fun movies that are basically the stories in-name-only. As long as there's a good creative team behind it, a movie can be great even without following the source. ...But then, there are movies that obviously don't have anything to do with the source material, that whoever produced it just said "Ooh, this thing has a nice title to it. Turn out a script in two weeks, get some actors who will work for scale, and put as much awkward symbolism and/or gross-out humor in it as you can. People don't have enough to do on a Saturday, so they'll see it no matter how much it sucks and we'll get money off of it! Genius!" Blood & Chocolate, Inspector Gadget, and everything by Uwe Boll are all movies that have fallen prey to greedy producers, becoming horrible adaptations of terrific stories.In case you haven't guessed yet, Mr Popper's Penguins is one of them.If you've never heard of it, Mr Popper's Penguins is a 1938 children's book about a man who inherits penguins and decides to put on a show with them, traveling the vaudeville circuit and becoming household names. The writing's nothing special, but the ideas and some of the humor is really great and would have made for a fun movie. Throw Jim Carrey in the mix and you would have the ingredients for an incredible family movie! I was excited to see this... but now all it does is make me mad as hell!The movie has absolutely NOTHING to do with the book. The setting is wrong, the characters are wrong, the story is wrong, the message is wrong, everything is wrong! Like I said before, I wouldn't mind so much if they were replaced with good ideas, but they're NOT! The story in a nutshell is that Mr Popper, played by Jim Carrey, is a divorced, highly paid, white-collar worker who gets a penguin as a posthumous gift from his late father, who, as we learn from a poor opening, never spent enough time with him. By accident, he receives 5 more and he has to find a way to live with them in the middle of New York. Hijinks ensure. ...Actually, not really, because this movie is blander than Kevin Costner eating Styrofoam on wheat toast...The entire movie is a contrivance, using every single tired cliché. The dad is divorced but still has a loving family that visits him, he's almost at the top of his game but is suddenly dragged down by something close to him, he needs to learn that family comes before business, the animal sidekicks do things that are cute, funny, and impossible for normal animals to do normally, a penguin wants to fly, and so on and so forth. We've seen all these ideas in practically every family film of the last decade! We know what's going to happen, we know how it will end, and there are no surprises or clever lines throughout!How are the characters? BORING! Yes, even Jim Carrey, one of the funniest people of the big screen! Normally, he's a very flexible, very over-the-top guy who puts as much energy into his roles as he possibly can. But here, he always looks like he's restrained, like someone off-screen is constantly telling him to not steal the spotlight from the penguins. As a result, we have a very boring Carrey who seems to frown and act depressed the entire movie. Besides Carrey, we have Ophelia Lovibond, whose only role is to perform alliteration with "P" words, Clark Gregg who plays a sleazy bad guy that only gets 5 minutes of screen time, and Angela Lansbury(yes, THE Angela Lansbury) who is much too talented to be in this movie.Let's talk about the humor. The humor is about as juvenile as it can get. All jokes are aimed at kids, and the producers are praying that penguins screaming at a picture of a shark will get the kids laughing. And that's the height of the humor here. There is a lot, a LOT, of gross-out jokes in this movie. One of the penguins, named Stinky appropriately enough, constantly breaks wind throughout the movie. Oh, and there's a two-minute scene of Popper holding the penguins over a toilet and... let's just say it's time to refill your popcorn here. The humor is bottom-of-the-barrel generic kid movie stuff that will probably leave anyone over 3-years-old groaning.Well, maybe the story is good? NO! Without giving much away, the story is a contrived mess without logic or creative thought. For example, when Carrey reads that penguins like cold environments, does he buy a freezer? No, he just opens the windows, letting snow and ice flood a very expensive New York penthouse. His care of the penguins becomes more and more of an obsession throughout the movie, to the point where it actually gets scary and he neglects his family, his job, and any sense of other responsibility. The whole plot is based around the requirement that everybody be an idiot. Nobody thinks, nobody plans, they just do, creating unlikable characters and unlikable settings.Overall, this is one of the WORST MOVIES I HAVE EVER SEEN! There is no thought, no creativity, no effort, NOTHING! I am AMAZED at how lazy this movie is! It was clearly only made to make money for the studio or to provide a way for younger audiences to shut up for 95 minutes. My recommendation: Give your kids the book, give the Goodwill store the DVD, and watch one of the several dozen GOOD movies Jim Carrey has made.

Mr. Poppers Penguins was one of my favorite books when I was a child and plus, I was a big Jim Carrey fan. Wow, this film was a complete let down! This movie didn't follow anything from the book. I can understand, taking creative license, but to take the title and loosely based it on Mr. Popper's Penguin adding a new plot, new characters, and new everything is a disgrace to the book fans that love the work. It's not like the book didn't have a simple good plot. It did! Why couldn't they just keep the plot of the book rather than this new over complex mess of a film? The book did win a Newbury award, no less. So, it's brilliant written. Mr. Popper's Penguins was a children's book written by Richard and Florence Atwater in 1938. It tells the story of a poor house painter named Mr. Popper and his family, who live in the small town of Stillwater in the 1930s. The Poppers unexpectedly come into possession of a penguin, Captain Cook. The Poppers then receive a female penguin from the zoo, who mates with Captain Cook to have 10 baby penguins. Before long, something must be done so the penguins can live with the Poppers. That's the plot!! It's so simple! Now, let's look at this 2011's film version directed by Mark Waters. Tom Popper (Jim Carrey) is a divorced real estate entrepreneur whose father traveled to many far places around the world during his childhood. He uses methods of experiencing adventures to get CEOs of businesses into selling their buildings to Popper's real estate company. Wow, this is so easy for young children to understand. It's not like hard to explain, painter (Sarcasm). Honestly, are we trying to get children to see this movie or adults? I doubt average blue collars adults would ever care about this rich snob who has brats as kids, Janie Popper & Billy Popper (Madeline Carroll and Maxwell Perry Cotton). In the book, these kids were great examples of how kids should act. They made the father-loving children into spoil brats who selfish want to keep the penguins to themselves. They even made the Zookeeper Nat Jones (Clark Gregg) into a villain because he knows that they are wild animals, not pets. Not cool, movie. When, Tom's father dies, his father sent him, his last souvenir; a group of gentoo penguins. Honestly, I know it's a kid's film, but couldn't they at less do their research, and make the gentoo penguin seem like real creatures, rather then, badly done CGI one trip stereotypes. What is with the names? Bitey, Stinky, Lovey, Nimrod, and Loudy? Sounds like the rejects of the other dwarfs from Snow White. I honestly dig the old names. The penguins were name after famous explorers like Captain in the film is known as Captain Cook. Plus, in the book, they are all different types of penguins ranging from gentoo to Emperor. This movie really seems to be dumbing down the children with names like that. Bitey, Stinky, Nimrod, and Loudy are horrible negative names for animals. It's like telling kids, it's OK to call people horrible names, if they have a negative stereotype. Not only did the movie cut how Mr. Popper was able to surround them by having them trained to do life shows like the book which would be entertaining to watch. Rather we are forced to watch Popper trying to buy off the Tavern on the Green and him fighting against its elderly owner, Selma Van Gundy (Angela Lansbury). This is sad, because not only is this movie destroying the book, but a very popular New York restaurant. Too bad, it closed down in real life in 2009, but it's still own by the city of NY as a gift shop. Plus, I thought Angela Lansbury was badly misused. She could had narrator this movie. At less, the movie somewhat follows the book in the sub-plot where Mr. Popper become to question if living in this type of an environment is the best thing for the penguins and feels he is not capable of raising the penguins. His children and ex-wife, however, are disappointed in his decision, seeing it as wrong. I have to say this family is one of the most selfish stupidest people in the world. Maybe we should teach our children that loving an animal sometimes means letting an expert care for it properly. And that trying to care for an exotic animal we know nothing about, in an apartment that has none of the essential living requirements, is a very irresponsible thing to do and will likely not have a happy ending. The ending with the love test is a joke, not real. The film had a weak moral lesson. Honestly, I didn't like most of the new characters. Honestly, the only new character, I like in this film is Ophelia Lovibond as Pippi. I'm surprised, Mr. Popper didn't fall in love with her. She was a lot kinder than his ex-wife. (Carla Gugino). In the book, his wife was very supporting character to him and not divorce. Our children are influenced by our media. I do feel like with children oriented movies, we shouldn't be showing divorce as an easy fix for "rough patches" in marriages, and provide hope that a happy experience will bring together divorced parents because that's not true. The crude humor was not funny at all. Even for little kids, it's wasn't the greatest poop jokes ever or slapstick. Jim Carrey wasn't funny at all. I enjoy Jim Carrey's talent but I can't understand why he had such a lack of effort. Overall: Hollywood needs to stop attempting to make spins offs of children's classics, and stick to the original story. They're called classics for a reason, don't mess with it!