'Mr. Popper's Penguins' at the Library

The will be showing "Mr. Popper’s Penguins" (Rated: PG, 94 minutes) on Friday,  Jan. 20 at 3:30 p.m. in the Community Room.

Based on the 1938 book of the same name by Richard and Florence Atwater, "Mr. Popper’s Penguins" is a comedy about how the sur­prise appearance of a penguin at a New York businessman’s door turns his life completely upside down, while simultaneously teaching him an important lesson about the value of family.

Far from the small-town painter fea­tured in the book, the film’s Mr. Popper is a real estate developer who lives in an exclusive apartment on Park Avenue, has his sights set on becoming a partner in his firm, and is an every-other-weekend father to his two children. A ruthless developer with no time for anything but business, Mr. Popper resolves to deal with his father’s parting gift of a penguin by getting rid of the annoying bird as quickly as possible.

That proves much more difficult than expected, even with the help of his ultra-efficient assistant Pippi, who speaks primarily in p’s, and Mr. Popper soon winds up with six penguins. Even more unexpected is how mark­edly those penguins begin to affect the relationship between Mr. Popper and his children and how that change affects the rest of Mr. Popper’s life.

This program is sponsored by the Needham Free Public Library. For further information, call the library at 781-455-7559.