Penguin Bloom: Neon NZ Review

There's something awfully familiar about Glendyn Ivin's film version of the book Penguin Bloom.

It's a predictable tale of triumph over adversity, and one which hits pretty much all of the expected beats as it traverses toward its endgame.

Watts plays Sam, a surf-loving waterbaby whose perfect idyll with her husband Cam (The Walking Dead's Lincoln, just about managing an Aussie accent) and three kids is rudely shattered when holidaying in Thailand. Venturing up a roof, Sam falls thanks to a rotten barrier and falls to the ground, emerging paralysed from the "bra strap" bone down.

Heading back to Australia, Sam struggles to acclimate to what has happened, and as the family adjusts around her, feelings of frustration and loss of familial place bubble up in among the expected grief and inevitable depression.

When her son Noah (a sensitive Griffin Murray-Johnston) discovers a magpie that's unable to fly after falling from a tree - spot the parallels already - he brings it home, and asks his mother to keep an eye on it.

And you can tell what's coming next.

There's nothing new in Penguin Bloom, and whilst it's told with sensitivity by its director, it borders on occasionally cute thanks to the magpie's antics and the sappy as it treads into familiar waters and beats. There's little subtlety here thanks to the symbolism, and while the fall itself is a truly shocking moment, the film barely offers any further shocks as it plays on (aside from one third act out-of-the-blue incident which surprises).

But there are moments throughout that work - the growing relationship between Sam and the magpie named Penguin are believable and tenderly choreographed. Of the rest of the family, only Lincoln and Murray-Johnston are afforded a touch more characterisation, but those are broad strokes at the best of times.

And while the cinematography and sensitive camera work don't overplay much of the film's potential to head into saccharine waters, Penguin Bloom feels like a throwback of a film in many ways, a safe and family friendly one that would easily pass a 90 minute window in the coming summer months.

You'd have to be a fool to not know how it's all going to play out, and you'd have to have a hard heart to not be moved by parts of Penguin Bloom. It never quite soars, but is the kind of film that's rarely made these days - an inoffensive parable where everyone acquits themselves reasonably and younger viewers will be left mildly inspired.