“We are continuing the themes of home and being an immigrant and coming back to where you are officially from and how you feel when you get there.”
Lovely stuff. Paddington’s immigrant story (entirely fitting with Bond’s original character, which was inspired by the journeys of refugees and WWII evacuees) and the films’ messages about tolerance and belonging are part of their magic.
What the premise of Paddington in Peru ignores though, is that this character and these jokes work precisely because Paddington isn’t in Peru. There’s no gag intrinsic to a bear being in a wild; that’s where they live.
Out now in the US and Canada after a staggered international release, Paddington in Peru tells the story of the Brown family travelling to South America to visit Paddington’s Aunt Lucy. There, they uncover a mystery that involves a perilous river journey, an ancient tribe, and centuries-old hidden treasure. It’s a larger-than-life romp built around fairground-style thrills, and a very nice family film – quite possibly the kind of movie people anticipated when StudioCanal’s CGI Paddington project was first announced. Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas are good value in in it, as Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas tend to be.
Paddington in Peru, however, isn’t as funny as the first two films. It’s sweet and silly, but few could argue that any of its sequences are comedic standouts. It’s missing the precision-engineered Buster Keaton-style comic timing of say, Paddington 2’s window cleaning sequence. What it’s really missing though, is that vital clash of bear-meets-non-bear-world.
The third movie was a box office hit, and, perhaps thanks to the work of the first two films, opened bigger in the UK than either of them. That makes a fourth film inevitable, and indeed, StudioCanal’s deputy CEO Anna Marsh announced one last week: “There will be a fourth film,” says Marsh. “We’re thinking about the next movies and we’re working on a new TV series as well as the stage show musical with Sonia Friedman and Eliza Lumley.”
