Dougal Wilson (2024)

Paul King’s two Paddington films were deservedly big hits, with audiences and critics alike.  It was always going to be a challenge for a sequel to match those predecessors but the fact that Paddington 2 (2017) did surpass Paddington (2014) gave grounds for optimism.  Less encouraging was King’s decision not to direct again and the more recent news, reported on the ComicBook.com website a few weeks before the UK release of Paddington in Peru, of the ballooning commercial pretensions of the Paddington franchise:

‘During the Brand Licensing Europe 2024 convention in London, StudioCanal CEO Françoise Guyonnet and head of global sales Sissel Henno revealed that Canal+ is already working on a fourth Paddington film and a spin-off television series, given their focus to “turn a heritage brand into a global phenomenon” by delving deeper into the “ongoing journey of Paddington from a classic character to a worldwide cultural phenomenon”, estimating the releases of both productions around 2027 and 2028, where [sic] the franchise would have its 70th anniversary. They also announced that by the end of 2024 they will be launching the West End theatre production Paddington: The Musical …‘

Paddington in Peru will probably make plenty of viewers happy and more money for Canal+ et al but I found it quite hard work to sit through.

Paddington does make a temporary return to his native land in the Michael Bond stories but there’s no ‘Paddington in Peru’ book as such.  Paul King shares a ‘story’ credit for the new film, along with his Paddington 2 co-writer Simon Farnaby and Mark Burton, but Burton’s the only one of the trio whose name’s on the screenplay (along with Jon Foster and James Lamont).  Paddington and the Brown family travel to South America, where they embark on a journey to find his Aunt Lucy, who’s gone missing from a home for retired bears.  He may be Peruvian by birth but relocating Paddington from Primrose Hill to the Amazon rainforest, the Andes, Machu Picchu and so on, seems to denature him.  Dougal Wilson is best known for making music videos and commercials:  this isn’t just his first cinema feature but, following a couple of shorts fifteen years ago, is only the third film of any description that he’s directed.  Wilson is understandably anxious to repeat the success of Paul King’s recipe – plenty of action, plenty of charm – but the balance is off this time.  When I saw the trailer for Paddington in Peru, I laughed at Paddington trying to take passport photos in a booth on his namesake station.  I didn’t when I watched the full sequence – not because it was already familiar but because Paddington’s efforts to obey a recorded voice and keep his head inside the red circle, generate a set-piece debacle which spills out of the photo-booth onto the station platform.  This comic overkill, a taste of things to come, complements the spectacular landscapes.  They combine to give the film a frantically inflated feel.

Risk analyst Mr Brown wants to show his sharp new American boss that he’s not as risk-averse as she thinks; thanks to his travails in Peru, he succeeds in a big way.  Mrs Brown is pining for the days when all four members of her nuclear family could fit together on one sofa; when they get into a tight spot in South America, it’s like old times.  The script doesn’t do a lot, however, with the Brown children being children no longer; a bigger letdown is the unmasking of the star-actor villain of the piece.  There are two candidates this time:  the smiley Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman) who runs the home from which Aunt Lucy mysteriously disappears; and treasure-seeking Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas), on whose boat Paddington and the Browns travel down the Amazon.  With this set-up, it’s weak that it becomes obvious at such an early stage that the rotter must be the fake nun, who’s really Hunter’s cousin and, like him and generations of Cabots before them, obsessed with finding the lost realm of El Dorado and getting her hands on its gold.

Paddington in Peru, like any other mainstream picture today, needs to mind its PC Ps and Qs, which probably constrains the baddie business.  Olivia Colman’s jolly-hockey-sticks turn at the start is funny.  When she eventually throws off her wimple, announcing herself as Clarissa Cabot, she also shakes down a mane of femme fatale-ish hair.  The effect is vaguely exotic but it seems Colman isn’t allowed to put on a cod Hispanic accent and her unchanged voice is an anti-climax. The Browns and Paddington use Aunt Lucy’s bracelet – which she left behind in the home along with her spectacles – to enter El Dorado, and find Lucy there, among a colony of bears with whom Paddington bonds.  At this point, the film-makers face a challenge:  how to reconcile the hero’s discovering his True Identity with the commercial imperatives of (a) delivering a happy ending and (b) smoothing the path to Canal+’s next Paddington movie.  They do this quite niftily.  Paddington affirms that the ‘tribe’ matters but ‘family’ matters more – and the Browns are his family now.

The resident personnel of the first two films is unchanged except that Emily Mortimer replaces Sally Hawkins; perhaps in anticipation of the cast change (Hawkins reasonably decided against playing the role again), Mrs Brown has been made a less individual character.  Antonio Banderas disappoints in a different way from Olivia Colman:  likeable as Banderas is, his comic skills aren’t suited to the sub-Kind Hearts and Coronets business he’s asked to take on, with brief appearances as a variety of Cabot ancestors.  It’s probably because Ben Whishaw was so memorably brilliant in the first two films that, this time around, Paddington seems not to have enough to say for himself:  still, as a result, the polite urgency of Whishaw’s voice is water in the Andean desert.  As a flight attendant telling passengers how to use their lifejackets, Simon Farnaby has only about ten seconds on screen but he makes you smile.  So does Paddington when, anxious to do the right thing, he instantly inflates his lifejacket.

There are some decent marmalade jokes.  Paddington encourages the llama he rides at one stage with llamalade.  El Dorado turns out to be an orangery; its gold is the fruit that the bears, under Paddington’s supervision, turn into the orange stuff.  Once he and the Browns are back in London, some of Paddington’s El Dorado relatives visit.  A shot which sees them brushing their teeth, then sticking their electric toothbrushes in their ears and noses, is as pleasing a visual gag as any in the film.  This comes up during the closing credits.  So too, in a cameo appearance, does Hugh Grant, reprising his Paddington 2 villain.  It’s nice to see him but also a rather painful reminder of how superior the previous film was to Paddington in Peru.

12 November 2024