Story Movie
Paddington, who has become a full member of the Brown family and a British citizen, goes to visit Aunt Lucy in his distant homeland of Peru.
Review 4K Movie
Paddington Bear gets a British passport and becomes a real citizen. Just in time - he has to fly to Peru to rescue an elderly bear Aunt Lucy. The Brown family, of course, are going with him.
Five years ago, I was in London and stopped by Paddington Station. There I found a statue of a bear cub named after the station. I took a picture, of course. And I took the toy Paddington home.
Why did I do that? Why do people love Paddington - even adults - because they already have another nice polite bear - Winnie the Pooh! And anyway, what does it take to create a world-favorite character?
These questions are probably more than enough for a dissertation. But Paddington is not Winnie the Pooh. He's a much more vulnerable and emotional figure. Winnie the Pooh lives in an abstract fictional world where the worst thing is the mythical Elephant Potamus and the wrong bees. Paddington, on the other hand, is thrown from fairy-tale Peru (read - Eden's paradise) straight into the streets of alien London, into the thick of people, into the crowds of the train station. All he has with him is a jam sandwich, a shabby suitcase, off the scale politeness and a note: 'Please take care of this bear cub' (as we know, for the author of Michael Bond's tale it was a direct analogy of sending children to evacuation during World War II with similar signs). In the real world, Paddington would have died right at this train station before he could get a name. And the fact that he was 'picked up and warmed' by the right good people and taken into their family is a much bigger tale than the assumption that a talking bear can get a British passport.
Paddington's adventures in movie format were quite in line with the book canon - the computer-generated bear was drawn very realistically, and the British cast complemented him perfectly. And with antagonists he was lucky - Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant turned out to be reference villains (apparently, the roots of the 'Heretic' should be sought there).
The third part had to wait much longer - and it comes out in a completely different world. Rental does not need to clear - it is already cleared so that cinemas are happy to any small-maliski loud premiere. And Paddington is not ready to stay in our harsh everyday world - and hurries back to the fairy-tale Eden from which he was banished (twice, as it turns out). Peru.
Transferring the action of the threequel to a new environment for the characters is a standard move for screenwriters. Old characters can be shown in new scenery and new circumstances. In short, the classic 'give us the same thing, but in a different way'. The success of 'Paddington in Peru' is that this 'different' is not just a new location (like space), but the story of an immigrant returning home. Who is already much more at home 'in a foreign land' (London) than in his native (and wild) Peru. And he has a British passport in his blue coat pocket, for crying out loud. His family of five (plus a bear) can easily buy tickets to Peru, charter a ship and do not deny themselves anything. So how will he feel back home? What will he do?
Fortunately, we're still watching children's movies, so we won't see any identity crisis. Yes, the bear navigates the jungle a bit (like trying not to step on 'those red prickly things'), and all of his motivation is centered on tucking his wet nose into old Aunt Lucy's shawl (analogous to a lost mother). And who are we to dispute that motivation?
The film's main camerawork for drama turns out to be Mrs. Brown, played by Emily Mortimer. This is important to emphasize because in past episodes this character was played by the beautiful, fragile, and Oscar-nominated Sally Hawkins (the most significant loss of the original cast). We're left to speculate how Hawkins would have played the role, but Emily Mortimer did a great job. While all the other housemates are having fun and fooling around, she alone realizes that Paddington will have to make a difficult decision - to return to England with them or to stay in his historic homeland. And the plot is organized in such a way that this seemingly trivial question becomes non-trivial - not bad for a threequel!
Among the new faces is Antonio Banderas, who plays a Latin American macho on autopilot (and a bunch of his imaginary crazy relatives). He's boring to play - probably because he has to talk to an equally imaginary bear on the set all the time. And the one newcomer who really drags the plot along is Olivia Colman, who plays a cheerful nun with a guitar with a manic frenzy.
The team's adventures, as befits a children's movie, are moderately dangerous, with a clear reference to Indiana Jones (and in some places to 'Jurassic Park'). Bear hasn't lost his confused and polite charm at all, and we're also going to meet a lot more bears. Yes, Paddington is essentially defenseless, and his armor becomes, above all, his family. And for two hours he can help us believe that there are such friendly families in the world, there are homes for elderly bears (even polar bears!), and that such a sweet and defenseless hero can survive in our dangerous world - both in the jungles of Peru and in gloomy London. And Puddinton's passport was made real for filming in the British Foreign Office, isn't that a miracle?
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