Last night, I decided to rent a couple of movies. One of the movies I chose to rent was Bob Saget’s “mockumentary,” Farce of the Penguins. Let me just say that it was strange to watch a movie like this that was written, directed, and even played in by the same guy who starre in Full House, a family-oriented sitcom I watched religiously all through junior and senior high school.
While the movie was quite funny and had some incredible one liners in it, I particularly liked it because of the social commentary that Saget created with this film. This movie was more than just a parody of the more serious documentatry, March of the Penguins. In this movie, Saget takes the ways in which we humans complicate our own love lives and turn them political and overlays them on the lives of penguins. By doing this, he allows us to see just how ridiculous our attitudes about and approaches to love and sex really are at times. This situation offers us a chance to go from realizing how crazy it would be for penguins to act like us in this realm of their lives to wondering if we might need to find a more sane approach for our lives.
The movie is packed with some great talent, talent that I was somewhat surprised to discover they’d get involved in such an over-the-top movie. I think the most surprising one to me (besides Saget himself) was Samuel L. Jackson, who acts as the ever-faithful narrator through the entire film. How he managed to say some of his lines without laughing is beyond me. I can only chalk it up to a sign of what an accomplished actor he really is.
In general, it was a fantastic movie, though not one I’d recommend watching with young children.