Paddington 2
Directed by: Paul King
Written by: Paul King and Simon Farnaby - Based on "Paddington Bear" by Michael Bond
Starring: Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson, Sally Hawkins, Hugh Bonneville, Julie Walters, Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin, Noah Taylor, Aaron Neil, Peter Capaldi, Tom Davis, Tom Conti, Jim Broadbent, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ben Miller, Marie-France Alvarez, Jessica Hynes, Robbie Gee, Joanna Lumley, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Eileen Atkins, Richard Ayoade
Voices by: Ben Whishaw, Imelda Staunton, Michael Gambon
Animation/Adventure/Comedy - 103 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 10 Jan 2018
Written by: Paul King and Simon Farnaby - Based on "Paddington Bear" by Michael Bond
Starring: Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson, Sally Hawkins, Hugh Bonneville, Julie Walters, Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin, Noah Taylor, Aaron Neil, Peter Capaldi, Tom Davis, Tom Conti, Jim Broadbent, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ben Miller, Marie-France Alvarez, Jessica Hynes, Robbie Gee, Joanna Lumley, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Eileen Atkins, Richard Ayoade
Voices by: Ben Whishaw, Imelda Staunton, Michael Gambon
Animation/Adventure/Comedy - 103 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 10 Jan 2018
Since the first Paddington got the origin story out of the way along with the less interesting ‘I can’t believe it’s a talking bear, let me steal and stuff him’ and the ‘he’ll never fit in with this family’ themes, Paddington 2 can get down to business with a meatier and more well-rounded plot. Paul King’s sequel is a much more enjoyable film than its predecessor with a refreshing villain, an idealized London, and an entire stable full of supporting characters staffed by Britain’s cinematic elite. Paddington 2 had the potential to place itself among the best recent family films, but it stumbles over a frustrating and lazy Three’s Company misunderstanding ensuring the new bear story is well done, but not groundbreaking.
Between Paddington iterations, I only remember the bear as cute sporting his blue duffle coat and red hat. I forget he is more Dennis the Menace than Leave it to Beaver. Paddington (Ben Whishaw, In the Heart of the Sea) means well, but he consistently makes a mess of it. 2015’s Paddington didn’t work for me because of the whole flooded bathroom launches the bathtub down the stairs and into the kitchen schtick. This time, the major accidental catastrophe occurs in a barber shop including a run away electric razor, a ceiling fan, and a mistaken bald patch. These hijinks are for the wee ones in the audience, but for the rest of us, while you’re just trying to get through the couple minutes long slapstick episode, look at how real Paddington’s vibrating fur looks. I cannot even imagine how long that took to achieve.
Between Paddington iterations, I only remember the bear as cute sporting his blue duffle coat and red hat. I forget he is more Dennis the Menace than Leave it to Beaver. Paddington (Ben Whishaw, In the Heart of the Sea) means well, but he consistently makes a mess of it. 2015’s Paddington didn’t work for me because of the whole flooded bathroom launches the bathtub down the stairs and into the kitchen schtick. This time, the major accidental catastrophe occurs in a barber shop including a run away electric razor, a ceiling fan, and a mistaken bald patch. These hijinks are for the wee ones in the audience, but for the rest of us, while you’re just trying to get through the couple minutes long slapstick episode, look at how real Paddington’s vibrating fur looks. I cannot even imagine how long that took to achieve.
Yes, Paddington the bear looks realistic and fantastic. One would think the magicians behind it all would need to keep the bear in motion at all times, for he would look like a statue if he was standing still. Not so. There is a key emotional scene where Paddington is motionless and a single tear runs down his cheek. The bear still looks as real as any human pretending to act alongside him. His run-of-the-mill interactions with the Brown family and his neighborhood are also why the sequel excels. Nobody gives Paddington a second look; it is the most natural thing in the world to come across a bear scooting in-and-around London reminding everyone what his Aunt Lucy would say.
Once we finally get past the awful set-up whereby Paddington is falsely accused, tried, and found guilty of theft, does the film really take off. It is de rigueur for an animated character to end up in the klink in a sequel. Last year, the minions had a grand ol’ time in the slammer in Despicable Me 3. Director Paul King uses the prison scenes from The Grand Budapest Hotel as an obvious, and very welcome influence. The film’s strongest and most memorable scenes occur in the Victorian prison and especially in the cafeteria run by the menacing Knuckles McGinty (Brendan Gleeson, Live by Night) who seems a bit perplexed on how to spell his own name. Aunt Lucy’s advice about how being polite makes the world right does not seem to apply to one Knuckles McGinty, a name I do not think I will ever get tired of saying out loud in my terrible Irish accent.
Most of Paddington’s jokes stem from the fact that Paddington does not understand sarcasm. It’s not that he knows of sarcasm but is not socially adept enough to catch on ala Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, but I do not believe Paddington has ever heard the word before. He unintentionally insults Knuckles McGinty and the film’s main villain, Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), to their incredulous faces. Bravo to Hugh Grant who gets to have the most fun in the film while others such as Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins (Breathe and The Shape of Water) are forced to play it straight. Grant dresses up as a foppish King Charles spaniel, a nun in full habit, and a knight in full armor. While talking to himself in the mirror, he switches from Hamlet to Macbeth in the same sentence. It is delightfully one of Grant’s finer performances.
Everyone else in this overloaded cast has their own problem and quirk they are working through which will eventually save the day in the nick of time. Bonneville’s father figure battles feeling old and neglected in a mid-life crisis sort of way, Sally Hawkins wants to swim, and the kids are into amateur journalism and steam trains. Even lioness Julie Walters (Brooklyn) is given short shrift as the housekeeper so other famous faces like Joanna Lumley, Jim Broadbent, and Peter Capaldi (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Legend of Tarzan, and World War Z) can get their fleeting screen time. Capaldi plays the local xenophobe who doesn’t take kindly to foreigners. The bear probably represents the leading edge of an incoming wave of unemployable, criminal-minded ursine-folk attempting to take advantage of Britain’s generous welfare state.
It’s the details which separates Paddington 2 from most of its lackluster family film peers. The vibrating fur, the single tear, and the headlines on Knuckles McGinty’s “Hard Times” newspaper detailing the most recent judgement regarding the get out of jail free card and the editorial claiming freedom is overrated. The city of London has also never looked better. This is landmark London - the Tower Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedral - no working class neighborhoods here. Adventuring among these infamous locales, a little bear from deepest, darkest Peru will impress parents as an admirable example for their children. He is the most stable being in the film always resetting to baseline after the latest kerfuffle and if someone steps out of line, or God forbid insults Aunt Lucy, Paddington will be there with a hard stare.
★★★ REVIEW: Paddington 2 - A sequel better than the original & a true find called Knuckles McGinty #Paddington2 https://t.co/dFaSuG0oTO
— Charlie Juhl (@CharlieJuhl) January 10, 2018
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