Dir:
Paul King
With: Ben Whishaw, Sally Hawkins, Nicole Kidman
Runtime: 95 minutes
GIVEN the hoo-ha over the rating for Paddington, which was given a PG when a U is more the par for children's films, one could have been forgiven for thinking Paul King's picture was going to feature the little Peruvian bear travelling to London to bust the Russian mafia wide open, one running gun battle at a time. Anything can happen in the movies, after all.
Happily, no such unpleasantness occurs. The news about Paddington is that it is a delightful, cleverly made, funny and inventive family film. Every home should have a bear, as the saying goes, and every family should give King's picture a try. Granted, it is rather scary in parts, in the way the best children's films often are, which you may need to bear in mind (no ursine-related pun intended) before taking very young cinemagoers.
Writer-director King (The Mighty Boosh) shows from the off that he has a lot of jokers in his pack. In deepest darkest Peru, an English explorer has discovered a family of bears. Far from being terrifying man-eaters, they are welcoming coves, so much so that the son of Blighty tells them that if they ever come to London they will be showered with hospitality. The bears, having little brain when it comes to London, are not to know that the opposite is true. If only the explorer had been Scottish. After a quick blast of Baker Street he would have put Mr and Mrs Bear straight.
So it is that young Paddington - though he is not yet known by such a name - arrives in London only to find a welcome as cold as the North Pole on Ne'Er Day. Visually, King's London is that of Mary Poppins, a place of mansion tax attracting houses in fancy streets with nary a car in them. One imagines BoJo approving.
Not all the natives are unfriendly. One lady takes a shine to him, Mrs Brown (Sally Hawkins), though her husband (Hugh Bonneville) is not keen. Mr Brown's iffiness is just the first of many obstacles the young bear must overcome as he tries to settle into the Smoke, and that is before he comes to the notice of the evil Millicent (Nicole Kidman), a taxidermist.
Michael Bond's creation comes to the screen accompanied by the sort of best of British cast that flex their muscles in film only too rarely. In addition to Hawkins and Bonneville here be Peter Capaldi, a Glaswegian playing a Londoner, and Julie Walters, a Brummie playing a Scot. Add to this lot Kidman channelling Cruella de Vil and you have a troupe ready to trip the light comedy fantastic out of a decent script.
As it turns out, King's screenplay is more than decent. He is a dab hand at the sort of left-field humour that will have adults laughing, and for the younger set he can craft physical comedy routines that call to mind Laurel and Hardy no less. It is the constant inventiveness that delights, with King even managing a new spin on that old children's comedy reliable, the comedy fart.
As he puts Paddington through his various travails there are some heart in the mouth moments. There was, as it happened, a young child behind me at the press screening, and he was not happy when Paddington was in peril. Then again, neither were the (considerably older) rest of us. The joy of King's film is that it turns us all into saucer-eyed children again. As for the slightly risque moments, they involve Bonneville, the good Lord Grantham himself, dressed up as a cleaner.
The absolute star of the picture is the bear himself, voiced perfectly by Ben Whishaw in best little boy lost mode. Such is the quality of the special effects, you will really believe a bear can talk, laugh, cry, snort, and wear a hat with panache. And if you think the John Lewis penguin advert is lump in the throat stuff, wait till you see Paddington watching old footage of his now faraway home.
All in, a furry delight. Marmalade sandwiches all round.
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