Movie review 'Paddington': Sweet, clever and cuddly

 

Director:  Paul King

 

Rating: 3.5 stars 

 

Paddington Bear. How well we know him. He’s cuddly, he’s loyal, he’s sensitive. He’s well-travelled but loves to stay home, too. And he can whip up a mean homemade marmalade.

 

As Mom would say, what’s not to love? And one can say precisely the same of the engaging new Paddington, written and directed by Paul King and based of course on the famous 1958 book by Michael Bond. It doesn’t try to be too clever. Or too sweet. Or too dark, for that matter, though there’s plenty of mischief, thanks to Nicole Kidman, channelling her inner villainess. And it works.

 

The ingenuity in King’s approach at a few points, his technique even recalls Wes Anderson is apparent from the start. We knew that Paddington came from “darkest Peru”, but King’s version shows us the backstory in entertaining fashion. In the Peruvian jungle, a friendly British explorer befriends a bear family and introduces them to certain veddy veddy English inventions like marmalade. When he leaves, he tells them they’d always be welcome in London.

 

Years later, when an earthquake destroys the bears’ home, orphaned Paddington decides to set off for London on a boat, leaving his elderly aunt (Imelda Staunton) behind at a retirement home. He brings with him only a suitcase filled with jars of marmalade, the hat the explorer left behind, and a tag around his neck: “Please look after this bear.”

Arriving in London, though, our bear (entirely computer generated, and sensitively voiced by Ben Whishaw) finds people aren’t that welcoming it’s hard to even get noticed, let alone immediately adopted and taken to a nice home. Luckily, the Brown family, alighting at Paddington Station, does notice him. The rather uptight Mr Brown (a delightful Hugh Bonneville, whom most of us know from Downton Abbey) isn’t keen to take him in for the night, but the two kids are, as is their warm-hearted mum (an equally delightful Sally Hawkins.)

 

Once at home just for one night, Mrs Brown promises Mr Brown, while they help find the explorer friend from long ago Paddington (so named after the station) proceeds to inadvertently cause a giant flood in the bathroom. This does not please Mr Brown, but will surely delight any kids in the audience, especially when the bear’s head gets stuck in the toilet. Who doesn’t love a good toilet flood scene?

 

As the search for the explorer continues, trouble rears its head. It seems that an evil museum taxidermist named Millicent (Kidman, with short, blunt-cut blonde hair and an unhinged demeanour) has designs on Paddington. She doesn’t want to give him a home she wants to stuff him, and store him in a glass case. Just why will become clear soon enough.

 

Meanwhile, all the Browns are falling for Paddington, including the all-knowing housekeeper (Julie Walters). Even the stuffy old Mr Brown there are clear echoes of the dad in Mary Poppins here comes round, and becomes one of Paddington’s biggest defenders. As the showdown with Millicent reaches its climax, it is Mr Brown who will utter the film’s warm, cuddly and very relevant message: Families aren’t only about who you’re born to. They’re about who you love. And movies like this are easy to love, too.