During the archly titled comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a metatextual Nicolas Cage bonds with Pedro Pascal while watching Paddington 2. The film, says the latter, “made him want to be a better man”.
It’s a fitting assessment of family entertainment’s answer to Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part II.
Paddington in Peru, the third film in the winning sequence, is weighted with expectation and heritage. The chief ursine mourner to the late British monarch was perfectly complimented by Paddington 2’s contingent of villains, including Brendan Gleeson‘s gruff inmate and Hugh Grant’s scheming thespian.
The reliable Antonio Banderas works hard to fill a Grant-sized hole even if the script isn’t quite equal to its predecessor.
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A letter from the mother superior at a Peruvian home for retired bears brings the Brown family – its risk-averse patriarch, Henry (Hugh Bonneville), his kind-hearted wife, Mary (Emily Mortimer, standing in for Sally Hawkins), slacker son, Jonathan, enterprising daughter, Judy, and trusty housekeeper, Mrs Bird – to the South American country.
Breathtaking tableaux are punctuated by a plot that requires Banderas’s boat captain, with a nod to Kind Hearts and Coronets, to play multiple family roles. Paddington’s search for his beloved Aunt Lucy is doubly complicated by the legend of El Dorado and a singing nun (Olivia Colman) who repeatedly tells a sceptical Mrs Bird that there’s nothing to be suspicious about.
There are good sight gags, including a tribute to Buster Keaton’s falling-house routine. Neither the action sequences nor the jokes can compete with earlier Paddington films. That hardly matters: a lesser Paddington outing remains vastly superior to most G-rated films. Fine lessons about good manners and decency are wrapped up in fun and fur.
In cinemas from Friday, November 8th
