In the mid-1970s, 23-year-old Englishman Tom Michell, driven by wanderlust, took a teaching job at a prestigious British boarding school in Buenos Aires. One weekend, while visiting a Uruguayan beach town, he rescued an oil-slicked Magellanic penguin, and their subsequent adventures together inspired his 2015 memoir. Director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) and screenwriter Jeff Pope (Philomena) have loosely adapted and transformed Michell’s heartwarming book into a middling and predictable tale of personal redemption and political awakening during a brutal period in Argentine history.

Michell (a charmless Steve Coogan) is now a melancholy, sardonic middle-aged teacher drifting from job to job, moving ever downward through South America until he lands at the gilded gates of St. George’s College, where a workman paints over anti-fascist graffiti and a bomb explodes in the distance. Yet Michell is more concerned about the paint dripping on his shoe than about the two alarmed policemen who ask him to identify himself.

It’s 1976, and Argentina is on the brink of chaos, with runaway inflation and civil unrest. “A military coup is imminent,” says stiff-upper-lipped Headmaster Buckle (Jonathan Pryce, sporting a Colonel Sanders goatee). “It’s a ghastly business. We try to keep out of it all.” Pointing Michell to his room, Buckle also lays down the school rules: no loud music, no smoking, no pets.

Michell is an indifferent teacher; instilling discipline in a classroom of wealthy, privileged boys is not his strong suit. He is further miffed when he is ordered to teach rugby, a sport he heartily loathes (“I like my balls round”). The military overthrow of Isabel Perón’s government almost comes as a relief, shutting down the school for a week and freeing Michell to travel with his sad-sack colleague Tapio (Björn Gustafsson) to Uruguay for some R&R with the ladies.

But instead of romance, Michell and his potential love interest, Carina (Micaela Breque), discover a beached penguin coated in oil. After cleaning the hapless bird (a gentler process than depicted in the memoir), Michell is abandoned by his lady friend. (She’s married.) “I ended up with no sex and a penguin,” he dryly tells a stranger. After two futile attempts to return it to the sea, Michell decides to smuggle the bird into Argentina (in a funny, if unbelievable, scene), where he plans to place it in the Buenos Aires Zoo.

Once ensconced in Michell’s bathroom, el pingüino doesn’t stay hidden for long. Named Juan Salvador by the housekeeper’s granddaughter, Sofia (an affecting Alfonsina Carrocio), the charismatic bird (played by real penguins Baba and Richard, as well as some animatronic versions) charms students and faculty alike. Soon, Michell’s unruly classroom is transformed into a Dead Poets Society of enthralled pupils and an inspired teacher of anti-war poetry. Even the stodgy headmaster falls under Juan Salvador’s spell.

But when Michell witnesses the military junta’s kidnapping of Sofia and later confronts one of her captors, the tonal shift from amusing inspirational comedy to dark tragedy is jarring. There is something unseemly about the upbeat depiction of one man’s redemption against the backdrop of Argentina’s Dirty War, in which over 30,000 people disappeared or were killed. Even when Michell reveals a tragic loss of his own to Sofia’s grandmother (a sharp Vivian El Jaber), the moment feels awkward.

Cinematographer Xavi Giménez’s yellowish, sepia-toned photography recreates the faded palette of the 1970s, while Federico Jusid’s tango-flavored score—featuring bandoneon, piano, classical guitar, and guiro—reflects the film’s tonal dichotomy between light comedy and serious drama.

Well-intended but conflicted, The Penguin Lessons ends on an uneasy note. Footage of the real-life Juan Salvador swimming in the school’s pool is followed by shots of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo still marching weekly to protest their long-missing children. Whom should we mourn more?