"Popper's Penguins" Premiers Proficiently

"Mr. Popper's Penguins"
π/5 Stars

This summer, theaters were presented with a pleasing picture featuring the purposeful Jim Carry and six positively precious penguins in the movie "Mr. Popper's Penguins." The plot is a partial parallel to the book published in 1938 of the same name. Though anyone familiar with the predecessor can note the perceptible difference.
Unfortunately, it experiences the predicament all pictures of its persuasion of having been produced for the progeny; the plot presents a problem of being poorly predictable.
Tom Popper is a New York realtor who grew up mostly separated from his adventurous father. But as his pop was away for progressively prolonged periods of time, young Tom grew to be somewhat emotionally cold. This proves problematic when he tries to relate to his prepubescent son and his petulant preteen daughter.
Popper finds himself perplexed at the presence of a penguin given to him through the will of his father who passes away early in the picture. When Popper tries to pass off the penguin, he unintentionally orders five more, and his family positively love the penguins before he can purge himself of the problem.
As Popper tries to protect the penguins from the prying eyes of his neighbors and a persistent zoo keeper, he grows to prize his pets, risking his job, home and family to keep them.
One thing I will perpetually praise the picture for is Carry's performance. I had feared it would be peppered predominantly by an over-powering portrayal of Carry like I've perceived in his earlier pictures. But I was pleased to see the performance played down, showing Popper as a positively mature character along with a hint of Carry's charm.
The apparent antagonists were puzzling to posit. The zoo keeper became the obvious villain of the film, but the other two forces were written rather poorly. Popper's bosses, whom he spent the primary part of the picture trying to appease for a promotion, would jump from pleasant to pessimistic throughout and proved to be no problem to Popper in the end.
Popper's pestering neighbor, Kent, spent his three scenes trying to prove the presence of Popper's penguins to the officials of the apartment building they shared (the place had a no-pet rule). But part way through the film, his story just petered out and he disappeared.
Another positive bit I can point out is that Popper's Penguins rarely passes into the present problem plaguing films made primarily for kids; the pitiful production of poop jokes. Although this movie doesn't suffer as badly as some other recent children's movies, it is present. It was especially prominent pertaining to the penguin promptly named "Stinky." The references are few and far between; but still present.
And as I pointed out previously; the plot is plenary predictable. Any particular plot event was easily seen coming several minutes prior to its prosecution. In my polite opinion, this made the picture very plain. I found myself purely entertained by a few jokes proffered by the comedy, and pushed through the picture just to see my predictions present themselves.
I did find myself predominantly entertained by the performance of the peripheral character, Pippi; Popper's personal assistant whose every line in the picture was peppered "P" alliterations.
Is Popper's Penguins a deep, preoccupying movie? Probably not. But is it a picturesque and pleasantly cute picture? In Popper's words, "yeah, absolutley."