BEFORE: I'm back on Netflix tonight, to continue the Domhnall Gleeson-based chain - also, one other actor carries over - but this is also part of a loose theme, if you consider both "Winnie the Pooh" and "Peter Rabbit" to both come out of the same UK-based literary background. Of course, last night's film tried to stay true to the real story behind the story, and this is a more modernized bastardization of Beatrix Potter's original story. I know there was some controversy about this one last year, but I think primarily people should be very upset when Disney or Sony or Fox or whoever takes a classic story and tries to modernize it. Because that always ends with somebody in a Robin Hood movie having gunpowder somehow before it was invented, or weird steampunk hybrids like "The Wild Wild West".
THE PLOT: Adaptation of Beatrix Potter's classic tale of a rebellious rabbit trying to sneak into a farmer's vegetable garden.
AFTER: Right, the controversy was over the whole allergy thing, because at one point the younger Mr. McGregor casually mentions that he's allergic to blackberries, and nobody in a movie would mention that unless it became terribly important later, and sure enough, Peter and his rabbit friends are pelting him with fruits and vegetables launched by slingshots, and after many tomatoes slung at his crotch area, they get the bright idea to propel blackberries at his face, with the hopes of landing on e in his mouth. They do, and he has a near-fatal allergic reacation. But, since he had his epipen handy, really, what's the big deal?
Well, a lot, really, which is why parents freaked out all over the place. Because this movie could very well put ideas into kids' heads, and teaching them that a dispute could be settled by exploiting their opponent's allergy as a weakness is very dangerous indeed. So the next time their child is guilty of a real or perceived slight on the playground, someone could get back at him or her by tossing a peanut in their mouth, and then game over. Or their kid could BE the one exposing another kid to an allergen, but preventing that would mean they'd have to use this as a teachable moment and actually TALK to their own kid about something, and really, who has time for that? It's easier just to protest a major studio production after the fact, because this way they're not legally liable for anything bad that comes as a result of their child watching this movie.
But really, there are so many terrible things about this movie, I'm hard-pressed to determine why just ONE of them should be singled out, when you can make an entire list of them. And anyway, this whole allergy thing should never have been an issue in the first place, not when you realize that if Tom McGregor was so terribly allergic to blackberries, he NEVER would have grown them in his garden in the first place. That was the scene, right? The rabbits were pelting him with the fruits and veggies found in his own garden. People who are allergic to peanuts do NOT become peanut farmers - people with milk allergies don't work in dairies, and so on. So logically, a farmer allergic to a certain fruit just would not grow that, so this whole plot point should have been nixed on the spot.
(Yes, the rabbits might have found some wild blackberries and carried them into the garden in their jacket pockets. Yes, Tom McGregor inherited the garden from his great-uncle, who might have planted the blackberries, and he just neglected to get rid of them. Yes, perhaps blackberries were very popular in town, so he grew them to sell and always took care to wear gloves when handling them. But at this point, we're clearly thinking about this in greater detail than the screenwriter did, so we're essentially trying to cover for him.).
What's even worse was what happened to the older Mr. McGregor, who was apparently responsible for the death of Peter Rabbit's father. Parents, why not complain about the fact that the movie mentions very clearly that this man caught a rabbit in his garden and had his wife bake him into a pie? And that rabbit had babies that then had to fend for themselves? Why not complain about the fact that McGregor then catches Peter and threatens to put him in a pie, too? What about the fact that, just when things look bleak for Peter, Mr. McGregor has a heart attack and DIES right there, on screen, falling over in his garden? The makers of this film just made your kids watch an old man DIE, so have fun explaining that to your kids.
There's another little element to that whole blackberry thing that is another terrible idea, story-wise. The rabbits understood McGregor's description of his allergy, which means that they can understand English. This isn't completely clear in the first part of the film, because the bunnies are always very far away from the humans, they try to read lips but they're frequently misunderstanding what's being said. But then later, when they're up-close with the humans, they not only understand English, but they SPEAK IT. Usually it's a convention of animated films that the animals speak to each other in one language, which we the audience then hear as English, but they can't understand English spoken by the human characters, and vice versa. But here it's all one and the same, and it sets up a "Toy Story" type of deception, where the unwritten rule is that the animals must never, never let the humans know that they can talk.
But then THIS rule gets thrown out the window in the latter half of the film, when Peter Rabbit really, really, needs to get some information across to a human character in a hurry, so he speaks in front of a whole group of people, blowing things for all animals everywhere, who took a vow long ago never to speak to people, for then the people would feel eight kinds of guilty for eating intelligent creatures who were also capable of speech and free will. There were already going to be plenty of questions from kids about why we eat animals and put rabbits in pies and have bacon for breakfast, but once you show animals talking to humans, double or triple questions are on the way.
I can't even follow the logic of that scene, where Peter Rabbit essentially says, "I came here to talk to you, to tell you something very important. Only rabbits can't talk, so you're probably imagining this, or you've gone insane, but just listen to me when I tell you this. Umm, while you imagine me telling you this, because I can't talk really, so just hear me out..." My head hurts now, so how is your KID going to follow all that? Seriously, there just had to be a better way to get around these communication issues, without referencing the fact that this is a film that just couldn't find that better way.
The animals here also understand things like how to work with electricity, how to detonate explosives, and how to blame someone else for your terrible actions. So, welcome to the world of humans, little forest creatures. As long as you apologize after, you can pretty much get away with anything. The electricity thing is probably the worst, bringing elements of "Home Alone" or the Road Runner cartoons into what once was a delightful children's story. And I can't even imagine what the consequences were of showing kids how easy it is to electrify all the doorknobs in the house, and how much fun it is when an adult grabs one and then goes sailing across the room in slapstick fashion, instead of dying from electric shock.
The whole conflict with Peter, young McGregor and the neighbor lady is also poorly conceived - it's essentially a love triangle, only one of the participants is a rabbit. She's a painter of horrible paintings, why is she so clueless about her own artistic abilities? Nobody can tell her that her paintings suck because she's attractive, and we can't criticize beautiful people? Or is it just that men want to sleep with her, so nobody is honest? More great lessons for the kids...
So it's clear there are deep, fundamental problems with the script here, both the framework of it, and all the little elements placed on that frame, down to the partying animals and the rapping birds. This whole thing should have been scrapped and re-worked, unless the goal was to take every element of the classic story and replace it with something modern that is also terrible.
The few lessons that are positive here are really aimed at adults, which are that it's not good to be an uptight workaholic, that's it not the best plan to indulge in fatty foods and alcohol for decades, and that as much as you might not like creatures like rabbits, mice, raccoons coming on to your property, there's not much you can do about it. I mean, sure you can trap the animals, poison them or drown them in the river, but then you become a total dick with bad karma. But there are terrible lessons for adults here, too, like that it's OK to lie to an attractive neighbor if you want to get with her.
Also starring Rose Byrne (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Sam Neill (last seen in "Dead Calm"), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (last seen in "28 Days"), Felix Williamson (last seen in "Gods of Egypt"), Gareth Davies, Ming-Zhu Hii, Natalie Dew, Sam Haft, Sacha Horler, Alex Blias, Dave Lawson, and the voices of James Corden (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Daisy Ridley (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"), Margot Robbie (also carrying over from "Goodbye Christopher Robin"), Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"), Colin Moody, Sia, Ewen Leslie, Fayssal Bazzi, Christian Gazal, David Wenham (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Bryan Brown (also last seen in "Gods of Egypt"), Rachel Ward (last seen in "Against All Odds"), Will Reichelt.
RATING: 2 out of 10 stepped-on rakes
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