‘Please look after this bear,’ reads the famous label hanging round Paddington’s neck, and this film does that, admirably, handsomely, endearingly, lovingly and not at all sexily. Such a furore, when the film was awarded a PG instead of a U certificate for ‘sexual references’ — oh no! What have they done to the bear? — but it was just the BBFC being somewhat over-enthusiastic, as it would later admit, when it downgraded it to ‘innuendo’. Still, I wanted to put your mind at rest, wanted you to know the bear is safe and this isn’t Paddington: the Sex Pest or anything, even though that’s a film I’d probably quite like to see.
Directed by Paul King, who comes from a television background (Mighty Boosh, Come Fly With Me), this brings Paddington beautifully to life and keeps it faithful to the spirit of the original while skilfully updating it. Paddington doesn’t have much of a back story in the Michael Bond books, but it’s all been cleverly filled in here, with a snappy opening section set in ‘darkest Peru’ and told through sepia newsreels as a dashing British explorer comes across the bears, discovers their flair for languages, introduces them to marmalade, and promises them they will always be welcome in England, if they are of a mind. Years later, a tragedy means Paddington is of a mind, so he stows away on a boat and arrives in London.
Visually, this London is a heightened London and it’s fantastic. It’s London as a pop-coloured picture book. It’s London as Wes Anderson would have styled it, but it’s better, this not being a Wes Anderson film. There are other elements that feel rather second-hand. Narratively, it channels quite a bit of Mary Poppins (the Brown family needs Paddington more than Paddington needs the Brown family, it transpires) and also quite a lot of One Hundred and One Dalmatians as Nicole Kidman’s baddie, a taxidermist who wants to stuff Paddington for the Natural History Museum, is basically just Cruella De Vil.
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