Movie review: 'Paddington in Peru’ is pleasant, underachieving nonsense

“A nun went berserk. It happens.” So said a jaded security guard at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in the family-film masterpiece “Paddington 2.” That guard may never have known that the miscreant “nun” was actually Hugh Grant’s hilariously vain, sinister master of disguise–or that shortly thereafter Grant’s character slipped right past him disguised as an archbishop.

In the threequel “Paddington in Peru,” Olivia Colman (“The Crown”) commits far more absolutely to the role of the Reverend Mother, head of a community of blue-habited sisters in Peru devoted to the improbable mission of the Home for Retired Bears. Colman is almost as hilariously cheerful as Grant was hilariously vain; with her precise enunciation and ingenuously wide-eyed gaze, she may strike you as a demented parody of Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music” even before she breaks out a guitar and begins twirling on a mountain meadow. Will she also go berserk and reveal herself as another scheming imposter? Or is the villain the flamboyant riverboat captain, Hunter Cabot, played by a game Antonio Banderas?

If you’re as much a fan of writer-director Paul King’s two “Paddington” movies as I am, you may think of them often while watching this threequel, from first-time feature director Dougal Wilson. Partly, perhaps, because you might just think of them often in general–but also because this film, while charting its own path in obvious respects, clearly wants to remind you of its brilliant predecessors (among many other films, from “The African Queen” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark”). In fact, among the threequel’s best moments is a must-see mid-credits sequence returning us directly to the inspired lunacy of “Paddington 2.”

The joy of the first two films lies partly in their celebration of decency, empathy and welcome, along with their gentle critique of parsimony and tribalism. Along with Paddington himself, voiced with irresistible sincerity by Ben Wishaw, the other great hero of King’s films is Mrs. Brown, played by Sally Hawkins (“The Shape of Water”) as a quirky, creative soul deeply attuned to the needs of others. The kind of person, in fact, who is unable to pass by a displaced bear in a blue duffle coat and red bush hat on a platform at London Paddington station without asking what their responsibility is in the face of his distress. As Mr. Brown, Hugh Bonneville makes a slightly more reluctant hero, more conventional and risk-averse—a risk analyst, in fact—but, once moved to the correct course of action, a force to be reckoned with.

The decency and goofy sweetness of the King films continue in “Paddington in Peru,” though the broader moral and social themes are lost in the quest adventure plot, which brings Paddington back to his Peruvian roots, Browns in tow. Here the emotional stakes turn significantly on the impact of time on the closest relationships.

On the one hand, with the Brown siblings Judy and Jonathan (Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin) now in their 20s, Mrs. Brown is feeling early stages of empty-nest syndrome, and laments that the once tight-knit clan no longer spends time together the same way. On the other hand, Paddington learns that his aging Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton)–the stalwart foundation of his moral worldview, now in the care of the previously mentioned order of sisters–may be coping poorly in his absence. What Paddington and the Browns find when they arrive at the Home for Retired Bears in Peru somehow leads to “National Treasure”–style hunt for a legendary lost city.

The recasting of Mrs. Brown, here played by Emily Mortimer (who costarred with Wishaw in “Mary Poppins Returns”) after Hawkins chose not to return, is unavoidably a loss. With Bonneville and Wishaw, we feel we are among old friends, and it’s lovely to see Harris and Joslin carry their characters forward into young adulthood. Yet excellent as Mortimer is, Hawkins owned the role of holding this family together, and can’t be replaced.

Nor, it seems, can King (who left the franchise to make “Wonka” with Timothée Chalamet and Hawkins). Wilson and his team of writers pay homage to the silly slapstick and whimsy of the first two movies, and at times it’s a charming evocation. An early scene of our mishap-prone leading bear attempting to take passport photos in a photo booth for his new British passport is classic Paddington. There’s an obligatory Wes Anderson dollhouse shot, and the visual playfulness of sequences like the pop-up book in “Paddington 2” that comes to life is echoed as Mrs. Brown’s nostalgic family painting becomes a window into her memories. Banderas’s oddly named Cabot has a complicated family history that manifests in cleverly filmed magical realist effects.

What’s missing? For one thing, where Paddington’s moral character in the first two films is centrally the subject of false or true judgments, and fundamentally has a transforming effect on people around him, here it’s simply taken for granted. There’s a bit of a redemption arc for one character, but it’s pretty rote, and Paddington’s contribution amounts to little more than a hard stare. Paddington’s character has become stagnant; while he learns something about his roots, he learns nothing about himself, nor does anyone else.

What’s more, learning about Paddington’s roots is actually a problem (mild spoilers follow). Paddington was always an oddity: an orphaned bear raised by an extraordinary bear couple who were taught English and civilized manners by a British explorer, but from the way Aunt Lucy (and Uncle Pastuzo) towered over him, Paddington’s size appeared to be that of a juvenile. After ten years of these movies, Judy and Jonathan have grown up, while Paddington is unchanged, both physically and psychologically. The more full-sized Peruvian bears we meet, the less Paddington’s stature makes sense. Raising more questions, the bears have houses–and possibly agriculture and even action-movie ancient super-technology. Is this a tribe of super-bears, or are all Peruvian bears like this? Were Aunt Lucy and Uncle Pastuzo also separated at a young age from this clan?

The “Paddington” trilogy might usefully be compared to Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” trilogy: a fine first film, an outstanding middle chapter, and an entertainingly muddled third film in which the hero hasn’t changed as much as he should have. (I personally like “Spider-Man 3” better than the original, but I’m an outlier.) Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker is no wiser or more mature at the end of his story than at the beginning, and Paddington’s store of wisdom continues to be defined by Aunt Lucy’s aphorisms. Wouldn’t it be nice if Paddington had learned something worth mentioning from Mrs. Brown? Or from his experiences in prison?

In the end (spoilers again) it turns out that both Cabot and the supposed Mother Superior are villains; their stories are even connected. Alas. The secret villain trope is overdone, and Colman’s hyper-sincerity is entertaining enough that I hoped it was genuine, despite her strange predilection for the word “suspicious.” The blue-habited sisters are a silly order in a silly movie, but their cheery benevolence fits well in Paddington’s world, as does the line “This is a bit unchristian, isn’t it?” after “Mother” reveals her true colors, but before she reveals that she’s not really a nun. At least the other sisters are real and not in on her scheme. Oh, and there’s a benignly ridiculous coda in which the Church offers forgiveness for impersonating a nun with a penitential condition that would make no sense in the real world, but almost does in Paddington’s world.

I smiled and laughed through much of “Paddington in Peru.” If it never threatens to become a film that I would want to live in, as I wrote of “Paddington 2,” it is at least, with some caveats, a reunion with characters to whom I would like to live next door, and that’s something.

Steven D. Greydanus, a deacon for the Archdiocese of Newark, has been writing about film since 2000, when he created Decent Films, for film appreciation and criticism informed by Catholic faith.    

— Photo by StudioCanal