"Mr. Popper's Penguins" --Movie and Book Comparison

            I recently read the book “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” by Richard and Florence Atwater.  I enjoyed the humorous and heart warming story of Mr. Popper taking care of all of the penguins!  I loved that the penguins became an entertaining act and then were taken with Mr. Popper and the Admiral to the North Pole.  It was such a sweet and endearing story.  Much to my surprise, I was disappointed that the movie was barely anything like the book.

            In the movie, Mr. Popper is a real estate agent of some sort.  He seems to be incredibly wealthy by his living conditions.  In the book, Mr. Popper paints houses and seems to have just enough for he and his wife and kids to survive.  In the movie, Mr. Popper is also separated from his wife and only gets to see his kids every other weekend.  In the book, Mr. Popper, Mrs. Popper and their children are together almost constantly. 

            A big twist that the movie placed on the story is that Mr. Popper’s dad sent him the penguin as part of his will.  In the book, Mr. Popper received the penguin from the Admiral.  Mr. Popper names all of the penguins in the book after famous explorers, whereas in the movie, Mr. Popper seems to name the penguins in a similar manner to the seven dwarfs. 

            The penguins in the movie did learn a few tricks from Mr. Popper, but they did not travel and perform for audiences as they did in the book.  I won’t lie, I was actually a little excited about seeing the penguins perform in the ways that the book described.  I was disappointed when the book changed the penguins to being more of a tool of entertainment just for the Popper family.

            In the end of both the movie and the book, Mr. Popper takes the penguins to their natural habitat.  In the book, Mr. Popper goes with the admiral to take the penguins to the North Pole.  They were trying to start a new breed of penguins that would inhabit the North Pole.  In the movie, Mr. Popper and his entire family take the penguins back to where they originally came from.  They watch the penguins reunite with their families and claim that they will be back to visit. 

            I enjoyed the movie, but I was very disappointed with how different it was from the book.  It seemed to me as if they took the modern spin on the book a little bit too far.  In my opinion, they should have stuck closely with the original text.  In my mind, Mr. Popper’s Penguins is a classic tale that I grew up with and it was sad to me that the producers decided to diverge from the story in such large ways.