When StudioCanal first brought Paddington to the big screen 10 years ago it was something of a gamble. The trailer for the most expensive film the French production company had ever made failed to impress the internet with many calling the animation style creepy and Colin Firth, who was set to play Paddington, replaced with the lesser-known actor Ben Whishaw, making fans of the beloved literary bear nervous.
But much like Paddington himself, Paul King’s film became a triumph of the underdog and was beloved by audiences, critics, and StudioCanal’s accounting department. Three years later it would triumph again with Paddington 2, which by several metrics is technically the greatest film ever made and breathed new life into the career of Hugh Grant who played the dastardly thespian Phoenix Buchanan. Now, a long seven years later, Paddington returns for a third outing in Paddington In Peru, no longer the underdog but an international treasure.
A patchwork plot
The stakes are markedly lower than in his first or second outing, he’s been part of the Brown family for a full decade, has a brand-spanking new British passport, and is a beloved member of the candy-colored Windsor Gardens in London’s Notting Hill. The greatest struggles the Brown family face are Mr. Brown (Hugh Bonneville) needing to come across as more of a risk taker at work, Judy’s (Madeleine Harris) imminent departure to university, and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) spending too much time in his room.
All that Paddington and Mrs. Brown (Emily Mortimer replacing Sally Hawkins) want is the family to spend more quality time together, so when Paddington gets word that his beloved Aunt Lucy is feeling lonely at her retirement home in Peru, the pair decide it’s time for the whole family to take a trip to South America to cheer her up.
Naturally, there are more adventures than just a family reunion ahead arriving to find Aunt Lucy missing, being told by the Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman) that Paddington’s beloved aunt has seemingly gone on a “sort of quest”. And so, they have to journey deep into the Amazon on Hunter Cabot’s (Antonio Banderas) boat to try and rescue her, or at the very least, give her back her glasses.
If plot-wise that sounds like convoluted nonsense that is just an excuse to get the gang back together, it’s because it is, and one of the more puzzling aspects of the film that seven years since its last installment, can only come up with a patchwork of plot devices.
Pitch-perfect
Paul King, who directed the first two films, is credited with the story (alongside Simon Farnaby and Mark Burton), but it feels like the movie started with its catchy title and worked backwards from there, with a central mystery whose resolution makes absolutely no sense.
This is particularly true of Banderas’s Cabot, both in motive and characterisation, and his relationship with his plucky daughter Gina (Carla Tous). While Banderas seems to be having a whale of a time with a character that is half Werner Herzog’s Augirre, The Wrath Of God and half panto baddie, unlike Grant’s delicious villain from the second movie, he occasionally hams it up too much and veers into cartoonish and witless territory.
Thankfully, Colman is pitch-perfect as The Reverend Mother who has a few tricks up her sleeve and reminds us that “The Lord moves in suspicious ways”. She sings, strums on the guitar, and dances her way through a wonderfully silly musical number, but proves just as enchanting when playing two-handed scenes with perplexed Mrs. Bird (Julie Walters) who has accompanied the Browns on their trip.
A high bar
While the time spent with Colman and her fellow nuns in the retirement home are the film’s funnest and funniest moments, packed full with background gags and zany one liners, the Amazonian antics are joyous but feel a little conventional in comparison. The action set pieces that take place in boats, planes, and Incan ruins are energetic but predictable, and while watching Paddington tackling getting into a hammock is a charming bit of physical comedy, you can’t help but long for another nun-based musical number to manifest.
It’s also notable that despite the title, the film feels distinctly un-Peruvian. There are no Peruvian characters (unless you count the bears) and while the film alludes to the previous horrors of plundering Spanish colonizers in a surprisingly brutal montage, it’s still an uneasy shift that there is more screen presence from people of color in London than there is in South America.
Whether it’s in “deepest darkest Peru”, West London, or the bingo hall of a retirement home for bears, Paddington’s family is endlessly easy to love
But it’s saying something that the standard of the Paddington films is so high, saying this film is the weakest entry is a bit like calling Machu Pichu the seventh-best wonder of the world.
Convoluted plot and problematic casting choices aside, time spent with Whishaw’s marmalade loving bear is more than worthwhile. When Mrs. Brown laments that she just wants to spend more time together it near breaks the fourth wall, as whether its in “deepest darkest Peru”, West London, or the bingo hall at a retirement home for bears, Paddington’s family is endlessly easy to love. No matter what they get up to next or where they go, we can only hope that it wont be another long seven years before we get to reunite with them.
Paddington in Peru releases in UK cinemas November 8 before heading to the US next year, hitting theaters on January 17.
For more, check out our guide to the upcoming movies to get on your watchlist.