REVIEW: ‘Paddington In Peru’ Gets A Little Lost Along The Way

Paddington in Peru, directed by Dougal Wilson, brings everyone’s favorite British bear back to the big screen for another family-friendly adventure for the first time in eight years. After receiving a strange letter on behalf of his Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton), Paddington (Ben Whishaw) and the whole Brown family venture to the heart of Peru to solve a big mystery. But in between Paddington’s bouts of charming nativity and sincerity, the movie gets a little lost in the adventure movie of it all.

On its face, the optics for Paddington in Peru are perhaps troubling. A British family galavants to Peru to finally uncover the secrets of El Dorado. It’s a folly that generations of real Europeans, including series newcomer Hunter Cabot’s (Antonio Banderas) clearly evil ancestor, committed genocide against the Inca to pursue. But this movie replaces the real people at the story’s heart with fictional bears. Even if this is an overanalysis of a children’s movie, the set-up for Paddington in Peru is a little forced.

Paddington wasn’t screaming for an Indiana Jones-like globetrotting adventure movie. So the first section of the movie feels long, drawn out, and a bit boring as it slowly sets up all the pieces it needs to place the Browns in the heart of the Amazon searching for a missing Aunt Lucy. Perhaps if either of Paddington’s siblings, Judy (Madeleine Harris) or Jonathan (Samuel Joslin), had more than five lines each, the intro would be a bit more durable.

The jump to the adventure format doesn’t serve Paddington in Peru very well.

Jonathan at least has a clear personality that Joslin elucidates without many words. But it does get weird after a while having these two in the background behind their parents (Emily Mortimer, Hugh Bonneville) but never speaking. It would be stranger if Judy and Jonathan weren’t included in the movie though, so even if they’re more plot devices than they are characters, it’s nice to see old friends.

The set-up is also quite dark for a family affair. Paddington in Peru opens with a baby Paddington nearly drowning and proceeds with threats of death and doom the whole way through. It’s markedly darker in tone than the previous entries in the series and has a few moments that may be notably scary for children. However, they’re always quickly balanced out by hijinks.

Paddington has a handful of lovely moments of physical comedy, and Mr. Brown’s risk-averse antics never tire, even when they become predictable. Mrs. Bird’s (Julie Walters) side adventure with the singing nun (Olivia Colman) is especially endearing from start to finish. It’s what really brings the movie together by the end.

Fortunately, when he’s not oddly mingling with Indigenous magic and Conquistador wannabes, Paddington is a lovely a bear as ever. He’s on a somewhat confusing yet straightforward and successful personal journey where we’re reminded that this very British bear is, in fact, Peruvian in origin. Throughout the movie, Paddington encounters reminders of where he’s “really” from and how his place of birth might mingle with his place of home among the Browns in London.

Paddington himself retains all his usual charm, but he stumbles into lessons rather than learning them.

While the moral is mostly forgotten throughout the middle of the movie, it’s applied to enormous effect in the end. Mrs. Brown’s worry over her family outgrowing their home mixed with Hunter Cabot’s lessons he learns about being a father to his daughter Gina (Carla Tous) mix perfectly with Paddington’s journey of self-discovery. It’s too bad so much of Paddington’s lessons are learned by accident—he really stumbles on them rather than actively pursuing a story about finding his own meaning of home and family. But nonetheless, it all works like a charm by the end.

Paddington is at least one of the very best-looking CGI creations of all time. From the first moments of the movie, the level of detail in his hair and his movements are quite clear. He feels entirely natural in the world around him, as any fully computer-generated main character ought to. Just don’t look too hard at the objects he interacts with, especially some horribly rendered newspapers or any of the other animals in the movie. It’s clear all of the animation budget went to Paddington and not the uncanny-looking llamas.

To be too mean to Paddington in Peru would warrant one of his patented Hard Stares. The movie is lovely in all the same ways as his previous two films. It is a family movie geared towards kids—the moral implications of its setting and character arcs are serious but they don’t need to be dwelled on forever. But in transferring to an adventure format, the movie loses some of its heart.

The movie feels somewhat contrived. It leads Paddington along, taking advantage of his naivety and wonder to teach him difficult and violent lessons instead of allowing him to discover anything on his own. While this doesn’t detract from how lovable this character and his family are, it does diminish some of the film’s lasting impact.

Paddington in Peru is in theaters everywhere February 14th.