By M. Faust

Americans may not agree on much these days, but we all seem to love penguins, to judge by the frequency with which they pop up on screens large and small. 

New in local theaters this week is The Penguin Lessons, loosely adapted from a memoir by Tom Michell. As played in the film by Steve Coogan, Michell is on a downward spiral when he takes a job at St George’s College, a prestigious boarding school for sons of the upper crust in Buenos Aires. The year is 1976, and while the country is on the verge of a military coup, headmaster Buckle (Jonathan Pryce) makes it clear that politics end at the school’s gates. That’s just fine with Michell, who simply wants to collect a paycheck for the least possible amount of work. 

But where does the penguin come in? You’ll have to see the film for that, as it’s not terribly plausible. As the country descends into the grip of fascists, Michell finds himself with a short, smelly roommate with a taste for fresh fish. Named Juan Salvador, the penguin inspires Michell to pull himself out of his funk and start relating to his students, as well as to members of the school’s staff who run afoul of the country’s brutal military dictatorship. 

If my recounting of the plot seems overly terse, it’s because it works much better on film than any description I could offer. Director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) and screenwriter Jeff Pope (Philomena, Stand and Ollie) barrel over the unlikely aspects of their story in order to concoct an effectively audience-pleasing drama. Along the way they provide some splendid moments for Coogan, including a scene in which Michell stands up to a military policeman that deserves to be remembered when awards season comes around. 

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No one could blame you if you got the impression that The Alto Knights was a new movie by Martin Scorsese.

The advertising announces this mob story as coming from the “hitmakers of GoodFellas, The Irishman and Bugsy,” which is misleading but not inaccurate: it was written by Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote GoodFellas and other notable crime dramas, and was co-produced by Irwin Winkler, with whom Scorsese has often worked. Bugsy certainly came from the Scorsese mold, but was in fact directed by Barry Levinson, who was behind the camera here. 

Based on the history of the friendship gone sour between mob figures Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, The Alto Knights is made to order for moviegoers who can’t get their fill of Mafia movies. But it’s overly familiar stuff, without enough strong plot points to engage general viewers. 

Its biggest drawback is the failed gamble of having Robert De Niro play both parts. Digital technology makes that kind of thing possible, even for scenes that involve the two characters in the same shot conversing with each other. But it’s only a stunt, and a distracting one at that. Costello is the more standard De Niro part, but the hot-headed Genovese seems to have been written for Joe Pesci: any similarities to GoodFellas are surely intentional.