Sequels can be tough, but while many rough and ready characters find that pulling off their first follow up isn’t as easy as it looked, a small, innocent young bear clad in a blue duffel coat and a voluminous red hat made the sequel game look exhilaratingly easy. With Paddington 2, the eponymous Peruvian bruin gave us a sequel that was superior in every single way, that from it’s playful setpieces to its vainglorious villain proved that even family films can break the curse of diminishing returns. However, while Paddington had licked the troubles and travails of a sequel as carefree as slurping excess marmalade off his paws, how would the little fella fare when trying to crack a trilogy is famously so much harder.
It’s not like Paddington In Peru was making it particularly easy for itself either, with a director change and a noticable reshuffle in the cast seemingly dooming the film to “inferior third film” status before the any film projectors had even had a chance to warm up.
Would the little bear fall as so many had before him, or could he use his famous hard stare to beat the curse of the trilogy?
The idyllic life of Paddington Bear in London is marred when he receives a letter from the Home For Retired Bears in Peru that his beloved Aunt Lucy not only misses him greatly, but has started acting noticably erratic. Seemingly having the sort of fluid currency that would allow a family of four, a young bear and their housekeeper to take an impromptu trip to Peru at the drop of a hat, the Browns agree and the entire clan head off to South America to put Paddington’s mind at ease. However, upon reaching the Home For Retired Bears, they are greeted by the weirdly excitable Reverend Mother who tells them that Aunt Lucy has actually gone missing and seemingly has disappeared into the Peruvian jungle leaving only her glasses and her special bracelet behind.
Before you can say “let’s mount a search and rescue attempt to locate and save Aunt Lucy”, Paddington and the Browns mount a search and rescue attempt to locate and save Aunt Lucy, but can only find one boat captain for hire who is willing to take them to where Lucy may have gone – Captain Hunter Cabot. However, while the typical disasterous shenanigans that Paddington innocently gets up to threatens to scupper the mission, what’s more dangerous is that Cabot doesn’t seem to be playing with a full deck. You see, gold sickness has left him haunted by the ghosts of distant relatives who were all consumed by greed and if his suspicions are correct, Lucy is on the hunt for the fabled city of El Dorado. However, Cabot’s psychosis is one thing, but what about the increasingly suspicious behavior of the Reverend Mother? Can Paddington and the Browns manage to survive the harsh dangers of the Peruvian jungle and find Aunt Lucy, even with two lunatics and a purple-kneed spider barring their path?
On paper, Paddington In Peru has literally every reason in the world to crash and burn. For a start, Paul King, the director who helped hone the first two films into the eccentric little masterpieces they really are, had jumped ship from guiding Paddington, to tackling another giant of children’s literature, Willy Wonka. Obviously, a large chunk of Paddington’s success was down to the Wes Anderson meets Charlie Chaplin tone of the franchise as the knowing humour skillfully trod the line between genuinely sweet and sneakily subversive and confidence wasn’t exactly bolstered by King’s replacement, Dougal Wilson not having a single feature credit to his name. Elsewhere, more alarm bells sounded when it was discovered that Sally Hawkins had also decided not to return as Mary Brown, instead playing a completely different kind of eccentricly dressed mother in the Philippou Brother’s magnificently ghastly Bring Her Back (talk about your tonal shifts). Requiring the type of jarring recast the evoked the Rachel Weisz/Maria Bello swap in the third Mummy movie, Emily Mortimer found herself in the utterly thankless task of trying to fill in while acres of children asked their parents while the Hell Mrs Brown looks completely different.
The final, potential nail in Paddington’s coffin would be that, in an attempt at variety, the threequel takes a massive step away from the quaint, Michael Bond-esque fantasy version of London that’s given the series so much of its character. With an adventure set in darkest Peru, gone are the quaint streets and the colourful supporting cast who are either reduced to cameos or, in the case of Peter Capaldi’s Mr. Curry, missing entirely and common sense tells us that we’re due for a gargantuan disappointment.
It’s in something of a Paddington style, third-act comeback that Paddington In Peru weathers all of these issues with varying degrees of success to deliver a third instalment that still pales in comparison to the towering Paddington 2, but still manages to nail a great adventure for all the family. Yes, the lack of London does manage to leech a bit of that distinctive character from proceedings to make it feel a tad more generic and the switch from Hawkins to Mortimer is – through no fault of the subbing actress – painfully distracting as Mary Brown not only looks like an entirely different person, but she acts it too. But despite the near-insurmountable task of picking up from where Paul King left off, Dougal Wilson does and impressive job trying to match his style. One such lesson Wilson has seemingly learnt from Paddington 2 is that if you make sure you find a respected actor with healthy funny bones willing to make a complete tit of themselves to play the villain, it’s tough to go wrong. Whereas the previous flick had Hugh Grant going full scorched earth in his caddish performance as dastardly actor, Phoenix Buchanan, Paddington In Peru sees the title bear have to not contend with Antonio Banderas’ gold fever suffering boat captain who is peer pressured by visions of his ancestors (also played by Banderas), but there’s also Olivia Colman’s full throttle turn as a psychotically upbeat, guitar strumming nun with a dark secret that not only scores the biggest laughs, but knocks Nicole Kidman’s bobbed taxidermist right down to the bottom of the pile of Paddington villains.
Of course, while Emily Mortimer’s face seems to suggest that she fully knows that she shouldn’t really be here (again, not her fault), and the slight reduction to sidekick status of the Browns is in full flight here, but after a slow start, Hugh Bonneville’s Henry comes through in a pinch with some cracking one liners and a belter of a running joke involving a purple-kneed tarantula. But, unsurprisingly, Ben Wishaw’s Paddington remains utterly unaffected by any of the changes and locks everything in place with pathos, humour and a neat line in Harold Lloyd gags that raises her heart while simultaneously melts it.
What could have been a major disappointment turns out to be a wonderfully confident trilogy capper as the franchise undergoes major upheaval with minimum fuss. Is it superior to the first two? Not quite, but it’s still a sizable step up from most family franchises that ultimately end up trading charm for CGI slapstick. Simply put, Paddington is now comfortably three for three when it comes to adorably whimsical adventures – not back for a little immigrant with a marmalade fixation.
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