by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $14.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Ben Whishaw, Hugh Bonneville, Emily Mortimer, Joel Fry, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ben Miller
Intro:
… a decent continuation of the warm-hug vibes that made the first two films so delightful …
With Paul King and Simon Farnaby off working on Wonka, Paddington’s next adventure has been handed over to new management. While working from a story idea by King/Farnaby, the writers this time around are Adventures of Paddington’s Jon Foster and James Lamont, alongside Aardman mainstay Mark Burton. The director, making his feature debut, is Dougal Wilson, whose biggest claim to fame is kick-starting the 2000s wave of horny-on-main house music videos with Benny Benassi’s ‘Satisfaction’.
As he told Variety in 2022, Wilson was understandably intimidated by the notion of continuing what has become one of the most beloved modern family film franchises, but credit to him, he put in the effort. He maintains the whimsically creative direction that King brought to the IP, imbuing the film with that same warming energy even before things go full adventure serial and the Browns make their way to Peru. He even pulls from Wonka’s sugar-coated theatricality with its introduction to Olivia Colman’s Reverend Mother through a musical number (complete with Sound of Music homage, because of course).
While it sticks to the charming and wholesome atmosphere of the previous two films, with Ben Whishaw’s voice ensuring that audiences will want nothing but the absolute best of outcomes for such a lovable bear, taking things abroad ends up robbing the film of one of its predecessors’ greatest strengths: getting to see Paddington make a lasting impression on the people around him.
The cast is still top-shelf, from Colman’s intentionally-thinly-veiled suspicious presence to Antonio Banderas serving as the avatar of the colonialist ‘pioneer spirit’ as a haunting curse, but for the most part, it lacks that vibrancy of Paddington being such a force of irresistible optimism that those around him can’t help but view the world through his eyes.
It also lacks a sureness of story direction, going with the usual adventure narrative pacing where the story mainly exists to string set pieces together. There’s prominent veins of immigrant malaise and the aforementioned anti-colonialism, which give the film much-needed punch, but we’re mainly supposed to subsist on the Browns getting various kinds of lost and afraid in the Peruvian jungle.
Again, the Browns themselves are as enjoyable as ever (even with the swap-out of Sally Hawkins for Emily Mortimer), but between the business-casual plot progression and predictable developments, it still makes one pine for them to be doing something a bit more involving.
Paddington in Peru is a decent continuation of the warm-hug vibes that made the first two films so delightful, but a bit of the heart and soul beneath the fur is noticeably absent. Audiences who want their dose of d’aww! will certainly get their fix, but as a follow-up to two films that not only defied all expectations but truly excelled at what they set out to do, even the charm and fun offered here can’t help but feel slight by comparison.
