âPenguin Bloomâ Review: Relearning to Fly
In this sentimental Netflix film, Naomi Watts plays a woman who, after a life-changing accident, finds inspiration in a magpie.
Naomi Watts in “Penguin Bloom.”Credit.Cameron Bloom/Netflix
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Anyone paying a smidge of attention to the early scenes of âPenguin Bloomâ should be able to write the ending â and most of what precedes it â long before it arrives. Yet predictability isnât the only problem with this based-on-true-life drama, one that underscores every sentiment and tugs every heartstring with wincing insistence.
Andrew Lincoln from his long stint as Rick Grimes on AMC’s
The Walking Dead, but he’s also starred in a handful of films over the years, with the most notable appearance being in the 2003 romantic comedy
Love Actually. After leaving
TWD during the middle of its ninth season, Lincoln had hoped to spend more time with family and pursue some different avenues in his career, and now you can see the fruits of that labor in his new movie, which is available to stream on Netflix as of today.
Penguin Bloom from director Glendyn Ivin is based on the Bradley Trevor Greive book of the same name, which tells the story of photographer Cameron Bloom (Lincoln) and his wife Sam, the latter of whom becomes paralyzed after falling from a balcony during a family vacation. Later, the couple and their three children find and help a tiny, injured Magpie chick they name Penguin. As they nurture Penguin back to health, they soon discover that the little bird may very well be having the same effec
CST
Netflix presents a film directed by Glendyn Ivin and written by Shaun Grant and Harry Cripps, based on the book by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive. No MPAA rating. Running time: 95 minutes. Available Wednesday on Netflix. In fact, this is one of those “inspired by real life events” movies that would have seem completely far-fetched (or perhaps based on an illustrated children’s book) were it not for the fact the story is adapted from the best-selling non-fiction book “Penguin Bloom: The Odd Little Bird That Saved a Family,” by Bradley Trevor Greive and Cameron Bloom, the latter of whom wanted to share with the world the initially heartbreaking but ultimately soaring tale of what happened to his family after his wife Sam was left paralyzed from the chest down after falling from a hotel balcony in Thailand in 2013.
Photo: Netflix
No penguins appear in Netflix’s new weepie
Penguin Bloom, and a cynical person might assume that such a misleading title must have been generated by the company’s fabled algorithm (with
Bloom thrown in to remind older viewers of
Bloom County and its beloved penguin character, Opus). In truth, the film was adapted from an Australian memoir of the same name, though the book’s U.S. publisher initially chose to market it more straightforwardly as
Penguin The Magpie: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved A Family. Written by photographer Cameron Bloom (with Bradley Trevor Greive), and itself inspired by his family’s popular Instagram account, this bestseller chronicles the harrowing-to-heartwarming period immediately after his wife, Sam, suffered a spinal-cord injury that left her paralyzed from the waist down. Depressed and despondent, feeling utterly useless, Sam had trouble mentally much more than physically just getting out of bed in the morning… until one of
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