As far as those good things are concerned, it's definitely a fun idea overall. Penguins are cool, and the overall mystery side of the story, at least at the start, is a decent hook that is easy to find fun. As the story goes on, it adds a couple other important plot points, trickles in a few other characters in a decently subtle way, so all of that is solid. And certainly, the plot is coherent enough. In purely mechanical terms, everything is there for a purpose, everything works nicely, there's a decent amount of set up and pay off, all perfectly good here. It also looks pretty great. A slightly Ghibli-esque character style, matched with generally very strong overall animation, and a few very interesting visual sequences, some very strong voice performances, and we're onto something that should be pretty good.
But, while there was definitely enough that I can say was good, I also couldn't help but feel like my interest was dropping off as it went along. While the actual premise was a decent hook, a decent plot hook needs a decent protagonist to carry it, and 'Penguin Highway' doesn't make a great choice there, with a protagonist that isn't especially interesting and isn't especially likeable. But mostly, I think it was just a bit too long. There is a pretty phenomenal 1hr30, 1hr40 movie in here, but the 2 hour runtime just feels a little drawn out, creating what I found to be some pretty severe pacing issues. And that all came together into something that was definitely enjoyable, definitely looked incredible, but ultimately somewhat struggled to hold my attention by the end.
