Paddington 2

Year 11, Day 100 - 4/10/19 - Movie #3,198

BEFORE: And I'm back on kids' movie detail for a couple of days - leading up to big movie 3,200, which could entail some collusion with the Russians - will explain later.  Also, I'm counting down to the "Avengers" premiere, less than 3 weeks to go, just 18 films away on my list.  My linking road to "Avengers: Endgame" goes through people like Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Elizabeth Banks, Bruce Greenwood, Mahershala Ali, Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga, and finally Bradley Cooper.  From that, I bet you can guess some of the films I'll be watching.  But I think I'm also including a few that you'll never see coming - it's what I do.

Julie Walters carries over again from "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again", so this is three in a row for her.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Paddington" (Movie #2,448)

THE PLOT: Paddington, now settled with the Brown family and a popular member of the local community, picks up a series of odd jobs to buy the perfect present for his Aunt Lucy's 100th birthday, only for the gift to be stolen.

AFTER: Once in a while I get one of those movies, and I think this is one of them, that somehow manages to tie up a bunch of threads from movies from the last few weeks, and put a new spin on them.  Naturally I've been on a very British track for a while, as happens from time to time - of course when you link between British actors this sort of thing is to be suspected, right?  "Sherlock Gnomes" and "Mary Poppins" are two other children's films set in London, and then there was "Fantastic Beasts 2" that was partially set there. "Shaun the Sheep Movie" and "Early Man" too, if I go back a little further.  (The only British romance I watched in February was "I Give it a Year", but it was a good one...)  Oh, but then there was "Lucky Break", which shares two plot elements with "Paddington 2", being at least partially set in a British prison, and depicting a stage musical performed in a prison (this happens during the closing credits of "Paddington 2", be sure to stay tuned for this...)

"Paddington 2" also shares some DNA with "The Commuter", if you can believe that - I mean the fact that both movies feature action scenes set aboard a speeding train.  PLUS it's a heist film, and it's also a film with a talking animal from British literature, like "Peter Rabbit" and "Goodbye Christopher Robin".  So there are connections all over the place - and we'll pick this thread up again tomorrow.

But damn, this film is adorable - or totes adorbs, as the kids say - it brought me joy in all the ways that "Mary Poppins" failed to.  Just look at that bear's face - I know it's all CGI and carefully calculated to set off the cute-o-meter, but it works.  The sequence where Paddington is trying to figure out how to get a heavy pail of water up the ladder so he can wash windows is a study in comic timing, going all the way back to Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton, only cuter.  Then when Paddington goes to prison later on - yes, they send a cute bear to do hard time, thanks to a comic confusion - he endures laundry detail, covered in piles and piles of prison uniforms, and once he finally gets a handle on things, he accidentally throws ONE red sock in with the whites, and nearly every inmate ends up with a pink uniform.  Classic.

I think the best stuff in this film happens in the prison, especially when they juxtapose the short, very cute bear with these enormous, very tough inmates.  Comedy is a matter of opposites, and the reference here is to that old (probably wrong) adage about finding the biggest, toughest guy in the prison and punching him out on your first day.  Paddington, who was always told to be polite and never lie, ends up complaining to the prison cook, who just happens to be the biggest, toughest guy in the joint.  But he accidentally wins him over and then they make marmalade sandwiches together - damn again, how precious IS that?  Other inmates come forward and reveal that they know how to make cakes and beautiful desserts, and before long the drab mess hall is transformed into a cozy tea room - you want to believe that this is possible, even if only in Britain.   I'd like to see Mary Poppins survive a few months in lock-up - she'd never survive.

Paddington, because he is pure and honest and tells the truth, wins over Knuckles McGinty, Spoon and Phibs and T-Bone and even Charley Rumble, and that's amazing, because Knuckles don't do nothin' for nobody - and they include him in the cutest prison break ever, shown in a cutaway scene that's right out of a Wes Anderson film, complete with a ride down the water-slide like laundry chute, and out to a DIY hot-air balloon.  It's worth noting that Paddington only breaks the rules when he's been convinced that his family on the outside has forgotten him.  I wonder why, with all the escape scenes, and the plotpoint of the bear newbie winning over his fellow inmates, that they didn't title this "Paddington 2: The PAW-shank Redemption"?  Seems like a lost opportunity.

Paddington's family, the Browns, of COURSE didn't forget about him - they were just busy trying to prove his innocence, and find the REAL culprit who stole the "popping-up book" from the antique shop, which contains the secret messages to locate some secret treasure somewhere in London.  There's not much mystery for the audience, of course we all can figure out quite easily who really took the valuable book and framed Paddington for the crime.  The guy's disguises aren't very good, but then again, this needs to be very accessible so the kids at home can follow along.

My only complaint is that they didn't give the human children much to do here - OK, the Brown son happens to be interested in steam trains, and what a coincidence, that comes in very handy, but the daughter didn't get to do anything, I'm not even sure why she was there at all.  Oh, wait, she ran a printing press or something and made newspapers and flyers, ho hum.  Couldn't she just have done all that on Facebook and Twitter?  Get with the program, girl.

This is a visually beautiful film, too - and not just because you'll tend to forget that the bear is CGI and not really there.  The scene where Paddington imagines himself and his aunt seeing the sights in London, but London looks like a giant pop-up book is absolutely gorgeous, and very smart too.  More like this, please.

Also starring Hugh Bonneville (last seen in "From Time to Time"), Sally Hawkins (last seen in "The Shape of Water"), Hugh Grant (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Madeleine Harris (last seen in "Paddington"), Samuel Joslin (ditto), Peter Capaldi (ditto), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Big Game"), Simon Farnaby (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Joanna Lumley (last seen in "Ella Enchanted"), Ben Miller, Jessica Hynes (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Noah Taylor (last seen in "Edge of Tomorrow"), Eileen Atkins (last seen in "Equus"), Tom Conti, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Marie-France Alvarez, Maggie Steed, Richard Ayoade (last heard in "Early Man"), Meera Syal, Aaron Neil, Jamie Demetriou (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), Tim Fitzhigham, Robert Stevenson, Claire Keelan, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), with the voices of Ben Whishaw (also last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Michael Gambon (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Imelda Staunton (also last heard in "Paddington").

RATING: 7 out of 10 Chakrabatic exercises