- Starring
- Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant, Hugh Bonneville
- Director
- Paul King
- Rating
- PG
- Genre
- Adventure, Children, Comedy, Family
- Release date
- Jan 12, 2018
- Where to watch
- Prime Video (buy or rent)
Paddington 2 continues the charming adventures of the lovable bear as he settles into life with the Brown family in London. Eager to buy the perfect present for his Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday, Paddington embarks on a series of odd jobs to save up for a unique pop-up book. However, when the book is stolen, Paddington is wrongfully accused of the theft and must team up with his family and friends to catch the real culprit and clear his name.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
Paddington 2 is a beat-for-beat rehash of the first live-action Paddington film. The plot is interesting enough. It’s a mystery story, albeit a formulaic one, brought forward at most steps by a series of extravagant yet ridiculous contrivances and leaps of logic. If you’ve read my review for the first movie, the same things I said about the first still stand.
The CGI is visually stunning, but also excessive. Because there’s so much CGI in the movie, not just with Paddington but in the backgrounds and the props he uses, Britain looks rather unreal. Every time CGI is used in the place of a practical effect, I feel like I’m looking at an out-of-place cartoon element or deepfake that shouldn’t exist in the real world. Pair that with a dynamic, constantly-moving camera, and I get confused and disoriented. If they were going to use this much CGI in the movie, I would ask why they bothered with making it live-action when they might as well make it 100% animated. A Pixar film is more convincing than this. Even so, I have to give some props for the paper book sequence. When the CGI isn’t trying too hard to pretend to be real, it looks really good.
The Brown kids are older and are now teens. They’re still the same sarcastic, impossible overachievers that they were in the first movie, except this time they’re trying too hard to impress their peers while loudly protesting that they’re not trying at all to impress their peers. Like in the first movie, Mr. Brown claimed that he used to be cool before he became a father, and now he’s all old, overprotective and stodgy today and feels bad about it. Like the first movie, Mr. Curry briefly shows up so he can make racist remarks about how he doesn’t trust Paddington for being a bear, and is made to look like a loser in the process.
Once again, I have to mention the element of CGI cartoon chaos. In the books, Paddington is young and naive and prone to making honest mistakes that somehow turn out right in the end, because bears always land on their feet. In the movie, Paddington goes through a series of high-velocity rounds where he tries to do a task, gets tangled up, makes everything worse and even intentionally disgusting. The filmmakers use Paddington’s alleged naive nature as a shield so he doesn’t get reprimanded for trolling people, and by sheer movie magic, everyone decides they like what he does. If they’re “good” people, they’ll let Paddington get away with it and everything magically becomes good, and if they’re “bad” people, they’ll want to see Paddington get punished and get punished themselves. I wouldn’t know if that’s a “woke” element; I think of it as a form of instant gratification, and that’s a modern storytelling element that bothers me personally.
These aren’t indictments on the movie itself. They’re the grumblings of an old-fashioned grump who refuses to get hip with the times. If you like talking bears and high adventure and you’re not as sensitive to modern silliness as I am, you’d enjoy it.
The drag gag from the first film is recycled. The main villain disguises himself as a nun to break into St. Paul’s cathedral. Although the villain gets away, the night watchman on duty goes out of his way to repeatedly mention how attractive he thought the “nun” was to the point where the joke gets tired and old.
Paddington makes friends with all the hardened crooks in jail by offering to mix a batch of marmalade. They all enjoy it so much that they volunteer to join him in the kitchen and make lots of dainty desserts with him, after Paddington had already messed up the prison laundry by mixing a single red sock with the whites and making their uniforms pink. This sets off an instant chain reaction where the prison becomes a playground that looks like it was decorated by a cute granny. Because making hardened grown men flounce about like feminized children is unexpected, chaotic and funny. Let’s not even mention the post-credits sequence.
The Brown children make a recording to trick the villain over the phone. They bring his agent a basket full of bread buns, which she adores. The recording tells the villain “nice buns”, and he takes that as a compliment regarding his bottom. He is a vain man.
Paddington 2 is a beat-for-beat rehash of the first live-action Paddington film. The plot is interesting enough. It’s a mystery story, albeit a formulaic one, brought forward at most steps by a series of extravagant yet ridiculous contrivances and leaps of logic. If you’ve read my review for the first movie, the same things I said about the first still stand.
The CGI is visually stunning, but also excessive. Because there’s so much CGI in the movie, not just with Paddington but in the backgrounds and the props he uses, Britain looks rather unreal. Every time CGI is used in the place of a practical effect, I feel like I’m looking at an out-of-place cartoon element or deepfake that shouldn’t exist in the real world. Pair that with a dynamic, constantly-moving camera, and I get confused and disoriented. If they were going to use this much CGI in the movie, I would ask why they bothered with making it live-action when they might as well make it 100% animated. A Pixar film is more convincing than this. Even so, I have to give some props for the paper book sequence. When the CGI isn’t trying too hard to pretend to be real, it looks really good.
The Brown kids are older and are now teens. They’re still the same sarcastic, impossible overachievers that they were in the first movie, except this time they’re trying too hard to impress their peers while loudly protesting that they’re not trying at all to impress their peers. Like in the first movie, Mr. Brown claimed that he used to be cool before he became a father, and now he’s all old, overprotective and stodgy today and feels bad about it. Like the first movie, Mr. Curry briefly shows up so he can make racist remarks about how he doesn’t trust Paddington for being a bear, and is made to look like a loser in the process.
Once again, I have to mention the element of CGI cartoon chaos. In the books, Paddington is young and naive and prone to making honest mistakes that somehow turn out right in the end, because bears always land on their feet. In the movie, Paddington goes through a series of high-velocity rounds where he tries to do a task, gets tangled up, makes everything worse and even intentionally disgusting. The filmmakers use Paddington’s alleged naive nature as a shield so he doesn’t get reprimanded for trolling people, and by sheer movie magic, everyone decides they like what he does. If they’re “good” people, they’ll let Paddington get away with it and everything magically becomes good, and if they’re “bad” people, they’ll want to see Paddington get punished and get punished themselves. I wouldn’t know if that’s a “woke” element; I think of it as a form of instant gratification, and that’s a modern storytelling element that bothers me personally.
These aren’t indictments on the movie itself. They’re the grumblings of an old-fashioned grump who refuses to get hip with the times. If you like talking bears and high adventure and you’re not as sensitive to modern silliness as I am, you’d enjoy it.
The drag gag from the first film is recycled. The main villain disguises himself as a nun to break into St. Paul’s cathedral. Although the villain gets away, the night watchman on duty goes out of his way to repeatedly mention how attractive he thought the “nun” was to the point where the joke gets tired and old.
Paddington makes friends with all the hardened crooks in jail by offering to mix a batch of marmalade. They all enjoy it so much that they volunteer to join him in the kitchen and make lots of dainty desserts with him, after Paddington had already messed up the prison laundry by mixing a single red sock with the whites and making their uniforms pink. This sets off an instant chain reaction where the prison becomes a playground that looks like it was decorated by a cute granny. Because making hardened grown men flounce about like feminized children is unexpected, chaotic and funny. Let’s not even mention the post-credits sequence.
The Brown children make a recording to trick the villain over the phone. They bring his agent a basket full of bread buns, which she adores. The recording tells the villain “nice buns”, and he takes that as a compliment regarding his bottom. He is a vain man.