Penguin Bloom Review: Must Be Weird To Have Wings and Not Be Able to Fly

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What Happens in Penguin Bloom?

Penguin Bloom, based on a true story, follows the story of the Bloom family after a terrible accident that happened in Thailand. During this trip, Sam, a mother of three, falls from a tower and breaks her back, losing all feeling in her lower body. Following this accident, Sam tries to get her life together and Noah, her son who convinced her to follow him up to the tower, tries to overcome the guilt he feels of leading his mother to that fateful spot. One year later, Noah finds a magpie and the family takes care of her and gives her the name Penguin. The rest of the movie follows the family’s road to recovery.

Who Are The Characters in Penguin Bloom?

Sam Bloom is the protagonist of our story and we see that she was once an adventurous spirit who loved to surf and to be active. We see her struggle as she falls into a depressed state from her injury and is deprived of her independence. Through the film we see her try to grow and find how she can continue to live her life even though she can’t use her legs.

Noah Bloom is Sam’s eldest son and since his mother’s injury, he believes he is the one responsible and becomes sombre for most of the film. He is the one who finds the bird they name Penguin, who helps bond the family after the accident.

Penguin Bloom Review

Before I get into the guts of Penguin Bloom, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. The story behind this movie was great, and I really felt this had a lot of potential. It seemed like a story I would read about, and I thought this movie was going to be emotional and grab your attention. But it didn’t. It was emotional, no disagreement there, but it wasn’t captivating for more than 15% of the entire movie. In my opinion, they wrote the movie poorly in two facets. 

One, the plot felt backward. I would have to read the entire story from the Bloom family’s point of view, but I really think it would have made an awesome movie to cover more of the back quarter. I don’t want to spoil anything so I’m going to be very broad, but the beginning takes too long. The ending was really captivating and it improved the movie as a whole, but it felt rushed. It was only an hour and a half, so either a longer movie or a shorter first half would have been much appreciated.

The second issue that I had was the characters. I love “Based on True Story” movies because you typically go from an all-time low to a very high point. The story is typically rooted in the growth of the characters, and this does that decently. Our characters do grow throughout, but we never really know our characters.

Such limited details are given about these wonderful people that it becomes very difficult to become attached and feel those same highs and lows that make these movies so well-liked. Movies like Rose Island create this attachment to the characters that helps bring the story to life, because the real-life people are very intersting. The other thing is we see a handful of side characters that seem important or that could have been great for the movie, but we never get that development or enough screen time for them to have any kind of impact. 

I did really enjoy a few characters, but it would have been awesome to learn more about their backstories, main and side characters alike. The story behind this movie looks fantastic, compelling, and one that would have made a fantastic movie. For that reason alone, I hope we one day get a book, if there’s already one let me know in the comments, but this movie just didn’t cut it for me.