'Mr. Popper's Penguins' almost starred Ben Stiller... and NFL quarterback Peyton Manning?!

When Jim Carrey’s Mr. Popper’s Penguins opens this weekend, audiences will get a heaping helping of the rubber-faced actor cutting it up with mischievous critters a la Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But before Carrey and director Mark Waters came onboard, the cutesy animal comedy was shaping up to be a very different film. Mr. Popper’s Penguins was always going to be an adaptation of the 1938 children’s book about a man who inherits a brood of Antarctic birds. Yet an earlier incarnation of the project, which was being developed by Ben Stiller and director Noah Baumbach (Greenberg), spun the story in a totally different direction.

“I know that Noah and Ben were a constellation that was floating around the movie before I came onboard,” says Waters, whose past credits include Mean Girls and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. “And to be completely honest it was a script that I had been sent a couple of times by Fox. I had actually passed on it twice because I didn’t get what they were trying to do.” Waters says that in that earlier version of the script, the main character (now a New York real estate developer played by Carrey) was a big-time publicist who represented Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. As Popper’s all-star client develops trouble with his throwing arm, sparking a crisis that needs to be kept under wraps from the press, the harried rep also has to juggle a madcap posse of inherited penguins. “I remember thinking, I don’t know how you guys would make this movie,” says Waters.

Neither did Stiller and Baumbach, apparently. After the high-profile pair moved on to other projects, Waters received a rewrite of the script. “I said to my wife, I just can’t read this script again because I’ve already read it twice,” says Waters. “We were on vacation and she read it and turned to me and said, ‘If you don’t want to do this movie, you and I need to have a serious discussion about your career, because this is great!’ And I was like, ‘Really, even the whole Peyton Manning thing?!’ And she was like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

Eventually Waters agreed to direct the revamped picture and placed a call to Carrey. The two had been talking about working together for a while. “He was the only name I could come up with,” says Waters. “There were one or two comics I was told I could make the movie with and the people who were being bandied about were people that I could never see in the movie. I got lucky. I asked for Jim and I got him.” Alas, Peyton Manning’s trophy shelf will have to remain Oscar-less… for now.

Has Hollywood Stopped Trying? The Smurfs vs. Mr. Popper’s Penguins

It’s Thursday and another fun-filled summer weekend at the movies is looming. There’s good news in the Hollywood forecast: Jurassic Park may be rebooted, Jon Hamm and Melissa McCarthy may star together in a comedy, Angelina Jolie and David O. Russell may pair for Maleficent and the Coens are doing a musical. But check out this more sobering look at how Hollywood has stopped trying.

CHUD compares Mr. Popper’s Penguins (June 17) to The Smurfs (July 29), both of which we included in our list of the Summer’s Nine Worst Movie Trailers (trailers below). Not only does each one look bad on its own, but shot for shot they “appear to be the exact same movie.” Check out CHUD’s play-by-play of the imagined film studio meeting in which a writer pitches execs the idea for both of films—-at the same time.

We have one word for you both, Jim Carrey and Neil Patrick Harris: Why? You’re probably asking yourselves the same thing.

‘Mr. Popper’s’ energetic, moving

The stars of Mr. Popper's Penguins -- the birds, not Jim Carrey and Angela Lansbury -- honk, swim, flap, squawk and waddle.

What they do not do is talk, quip, share their musings or advise their beloved zookeeper on how to win the girl. Oh wait -- wrong movie.

Anyway, the point is, none of them sound like Rob Schneider -- or worse, a decent actor phoning in lines from an excremental script. And after Eddie Murphy's Dr. Doolittle outings, Marmaduke and multiple Garfields, we've all heard plenty of that, haven't we? (Actually, apparently we haven't since there's still Zookeeper to come. Shudder.)

So this demonstration of taste and restraint alone elevates Penguins above the anthropomorphized animal comedy norm. Add energetic but calibrated work from Carrey and it should prove perfectly antidotal for families, especially those still nursing Judy Moody-inflicted migraines.

Is it enough to forgive director Mark Waters for the inevitable poop jokes (birds do that too), the sentimental cliches and the cookie-cutter plotting? Close enough. I was amused, entertained and even -- loathe that I am to admit it -- a little moved. Or maybe the penguins just wore me down as effectively and relentlessly as they do Popper himself.

In any case, it's a marked improvement over the abysmal How The Grinch Stole Christmas that Carrey starred in. More comparable to Penguins is Horton Hears a Who! in which Carrey voiced an elephant.

Like those movies, this one derives its name -- but not much else -- from a book. In this case, it's Richard and Florence Atwater's 1938 children's novel.

Carrey stars as Tom Popper, a New York City real estate developer who hungrily gobbles up, then demolishes, historic properties. A workaholic, he's divorced (from Carla Gugino) and has little time for his children (Maxwell Perry Cotton and Madeline Carroll). The only human he spends much time with at all is his assistant, Pippi, (Ophelia Lovibond) who possesses a perky propensity for alliteration. Somehow Lovibond does this without being grating. Woman's going to be a star.

As we learn from a prologue, Popper was neglected from an early age by his own absent, world-exploring father. And as is always the situation, all misers have father issues. Just as catharsis usually comes when they least expect it.

For Popper, it arrives in the form of a live penguin he inherits from his father following his death in Antarctica.

Eventually five more of the cute critters (a seamless blend of real birds and CGI) follow suit.

Predictably, Popper can't wait to send the penguins packing -- they're a distraction from his efforts to smooth-talk a piece of Central Park from a skeptical matron (Lansbury).

But when his kids bond with them (and him), he also finds himself growing uncharacteristically attached. Soon, he's shoveling snow into his upscale condo, skipping work, ducking a snoopy neighbour and fending off a zookeeper (Clark Gregg) who wants the animals for his own purposes. No, it doesn't include making a vest out of them.

Now 49, Carrey has been at a career crossroads of late. Nearly two decades ago, he was chatting up four-legged co-stars in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Now he's a superstar grappling with his second act. So far, the results have been uneven -- the lightweight Yes Man, the risky and ignored I Love You Phillip Morris.

Mr. Popper's Penguins finds Carrey in an agreeable groove, gliding smoothly.

It's a position any penguin would approve of.

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