Mr. Popper's Penguins Reviews
The National
familiarity only adds to the feeling that this is just another Carrey movie
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Fan The Fire
Hollywood might be trying to tell us that the answer to a midlife crisis is pets, not Prozac, but those behind the camera could certainly do with a little something to perk them up a bit.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Movies.com
This movie is definitely for young kids--anyone over the age of 8 will be insulted by how predictable it is.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A bland family film where your struggle with consciousness will be the most exciting thing happening in the theater.
Ebert Presents At The Movies
Not nearly as dismal as it could have been.
The Standard
(This) lightweight piece of family fluff will be amusing only to people who think the idea of a penguin pooping is hilarious. So under 10s, basically.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Las Vegas Weekly
A formulaic family comedy with little to offer other than prepackaged life lessons and Carrey going through the motions of lame slapstick and a half-hearted catch phrase.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Cinema Autopsy
Overall Carrey is wasted in this film, which is overtly geared towards children with its broad humour and thick sentiment.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Top CriticIt's not very good, but it works better than it has any right to because Carrey never ever phones it in.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Kid-friendly, if not exactly potty-trained.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Seven Days
Divorced or office-bound parents, beware: A kid who figures out the film's underlying message may just start asking for a puppy, or a pony.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/10
Birmingham Mail
Sadly, this is a one-joke film which Carrey cannot keep afloat...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Birmingham Post
It's not an unwatchable film, it's just that, like the flightless birds, it never manages to take off.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Liverpool Echo
A saccharine family-oriented comedy, which hammers home the central message about parental responsibility and love triumphing over adversity with all the tenderness of a nasty case of frostbite.
Mr. Popper's Penguins is a stupefying dumb family movie proving that penguins have limited charisma as pets.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Three Movie Buffs
Not a classic by any means, but Mr. Popper's Penguins does manage to provide some mildly, entertaining family fun.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Critic's Notebook
The message of valuing family over work feels half-baked because the film defines doing the right thing as breaking penguins out of a zoo and harboring them in a high-rise.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
AV Club
A film that can't seem to buy into its own strident message of "family first," possibly because to prove your love, you apparently have to risk the wrath of everyone from your co-op board to PETA.
Full Review
| Original Score: D+
Fervently panders to an under-10 audience with Carrey's main requirement only to mug in a variety of reaction shots to his beaked sidekicks' mischievous hijinks and to provide name-brand legitimacy to a dim and unfunny project.
Such a brazenly moronic and uninspired example of a family movie that you'd swear it was a parody of brazenly moronic and uninspired family movies.
Full Review
| Original Score: D-
