Disc Reviews

Paddington Review

• 16th Mar 2015

Paddington is dug up and giving a fresh breath of life for the big screen now in this half decent adaptation of the talking bear living in London.

Paddington is sent to live in London after his home is destroyed – on the promise that a home would be waiting for him upon his arrival. Instead, of course, Paddington is met with the modern day hustle and bustle of London traffic until a sympathetic mother and her family decide to take Paddington into their upper class well spoken home.

From here Paddington causes accidents and chaos around the home and also on the streets of the big city as he strives to fit in.

It’s all jovial fun at the expense of logical or reality – but one that is done with visual flourish and easy going humour.

The direction and production design do wonders for the film – even taking a leaf out of Wes Anderson’s book when it comes to showing a cross section of the family home.

There are plenty of locations used to good effect – particularly the Natural History Museum. But of course there are plenty of shots of all the hotspots of London (which are in fact excused with a decent enough gag from a Matt Lucas as a ludicrously accented taxi driver).

Sally Hawkins does her best impression of a naive Blue Peter presenter and makes her performances as wide eye’d as possible. In other words she literally throws out her entire career as a serious and dependable actress in order to deliver her performance here as the ultra-sympathetic and helpful stranger that no-one ever meets in real life. Call us cynical if you like, but kids film or not – Bu-ll-Sh-it.

But the same could be said for a lot of the adult cast. Paddington may have been brought into the 3D world, but the cast are trapped in a very two dimensional world that is aimed at kids. Big kids might just be able to get by on the style, the fun and gentle humour on offer, but proper adults will get very dismissive very quickly.

By the end Paddington is good natured and fairly sweet in its intentions, but it is all a bit too upper class British to swallow in today’s market. If today’s market is striving for equality and even a dose of reality then Paddington is fast asleep.

Steven Hurst