Bear-knuckled adventure

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This article was published 14/02/2025 (265 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a dedicated Paddingtonian, I approached this new go-round of the duffel-coated bear’s cinematic story with some trepidation.

Coming after a seven-year gap, this third entry might risk franchise fatigue. There’s a different crew behind the camera, which could seem worrisome, with original director Paul King replaced by rookie Dougal Wilson, along with a new scripting team.

Plus, the Brown family is taking a trip, which is something movie and TV series sometimes do when they feel desperate for a refresh.

Fortunately, Paddington is as endearing as ever, his furred face still a wonder of subtle animation, his character still brought tenderly to life by Ben Whishaw’s defining vocal performance. And our humble hero’s sweetness, his belief in basic human (and ursine) decency and his excellent manners have never felt more welcome.

Add in Antonio Banderas as a daffily delusional riverboat captain and Olivia Colman as a pathologically peppy, guitar-playing nun, and you’ve got a smart blend of the novel and the comfortingly familiar.

Paddington in Peru might not rise to the out-and-out brilliance of the first two films, but this family adventure story — a seamless mix of live-action and animation — is still visually inventive, gently funny and deeply, deeply wholesome.

As our story begins, the Peruvian-born Paddington has just become a British citizen. The Brown kids are growing up — Judy (Madeleine Harris) is prepping for university and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) has retreated to his teenage-boy room — which is causing some empty-nest anxiety for Mrs. Brown (Emily Mortimer stepping in, gracefully, for Sally Hawkins).

Mr. Brown (Hugh Bonneville) is still working away at risk assessment, precisely calibrating the dangers of everything from supermarket shopping to Morris dancing, even as his new boss tells him he can only truly understand risk by embracing it.

Clearly, the Browns need a family-bonding adventure. So, when Paddington gets a letter from the Mother Superior (Colman) who runs the Home for Retired Bears near Lima, telling him his beloved Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton) is doing poorly, it just seems right that the gang should fly to Peru.

When they arrive at the home, however, something feels off. Aunt Lucy has disappeared, and the Mother Superior’s repeated assurances that the circumstances are “not suspicious, not suspicious at all,” are not helping.

Tracing Aunt Lucy’s trail to an Incan site deep in the rainforest, the Browns charter a riverboat helmed by Hunter Cabot (Banderas), whose dashing good looks are immediately apparent — especially to Mrs. Brown — but whose motives remain mysterious.

As the Browns journey down the Amazon, it looks as though our dear Paddington might be searching for his aunt, but some of the other characters might be more interested in finding the lost kingdom of El Dorado — and the wealth of gold it supposedly hides.

As with the previous Paddington movies, there are film references galore, ranging from Buster Keaton to Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo to The Sound of Music. And if that sounds like an unlikely cinematic combination, well, Paddington makes it work.

There are some minor scripting issues. Compared with the previous films, this third Paddington outing doesn’t give the Brown family as much character exploration. The story functions more as a good-natured action flick — there’s a rolling boulder sequence that references the Indiana Jones movies — with lots of elaborate physical gags and slapstick silliness.

Still, if it doesn’t measure up to the first two Paddington movies, the story is still way ahead of most children’s entertainment in terms of its creativity and thoughtfulness.

There is a serious message here, with scripters Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont looking at Paddington’s dual roots in Peru and England as an expression of the in-betweenness of the immigrant experience.

And like its predecessors, the film is self-aware about Paddington’s status as an icon of Britishness — established by Michael Bond’s book series, which ran from 1958 to 2017 — an it continues to ask what that might mean in modern-day, multicultural England.

Paddington in Peru, then, might not be as perfect as Paddington 2 — which outstripped Citizen Kane on the film review site Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer in 2021 — but it is lovely and clever and cheering, and the cast and crew deserve marmalade sandwiches all round.

(Oh, and fans will want to stay through the end credits: there’s a brief drop-in from the series’ best semi-villainous villain.)

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca