By Aria Zhu
After the hit showings of “Paddington” in 2014 and “Paddington 2” in 2017 — the latter a rare sequel to eclipse the first film — Dougal Wilson, the first-time director of “Paddington in Peru” has two difficult acts to follow. Indeed, though the long-overdue third film is just as lovable and sweet as its predecessors, in taking Paddington Bear from warm comedy to Amazonian action, it loses its predecessors’ subtle humor and simplicity.
The first two “Paddington” films see Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw), a newly arrived bear in London from Peru, settle into a new home with his found family, the Browns. Throughout the series, the titular figure escapes adversaries ranging from a taxidermist to a washed-up West End actor and eats (or drinks) marmalade at alarmingly high rates.
“Paddington in Peru,” meanwhile, takes Paddington and the Browns — risk-obsessed father Henry (an excellent and goofy Hugh Bonneville), adventurous and quirky mother Mary (Emily Mortimer, replacing Sally Hawkins) and their two children Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) and Judy (Madeleine Harris) — far from their familiar home in Windsor Gardens. Missing the days of familial closeness as her two children grow up, Mrs. Brown takes a letter from Paddington’s aging Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton) as an opportunity for the family to visit her in the Home for Retired Bears in Peru. So far, so similar to the first two films: Whishaw’s Paddington is just as charming as ever, the Browns — Henry in particular — still as idiosyncratic.
Yet after the Browns’ flight lands in Lima, the plot becomes much loopier. Arriving at the Home for Retired Bears, the Browns meet the Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman), a slightly odd, guitar-playing nun, who informs them that Aunt Lucy is missing — kicking off a missing-bear search in the Amazon rainforest that becomes the film’s center. In search of Aunt Lucy, the Browns voyage up the Amazon aboard the charming Captain Hunter Cabot’s (Antonio Banderas) riverboat. As is par for the course in Paddington films, the plot quickly becomes chaotic.
Beyond the outlandish plot — well, as outlandish as it gets for a film about a talking British bear — the script is fairly weak. The first two Paddington films were packed with jokes; this time, however, the joke frequency is a tad lower, while the all-too-often lines about the importance of family, finding yourself and taking risks come off as saccharine. After the charming simplicity of the first two films, it all feels a little bit off — the action takes away opportunities for gentle humor, while the additions of Colman and Banderas, both of whom are funny, still fail to match the comedic gold of Hugh Grant in “Paddington 2.”
At their core, the Paddington films rely on subtle humor borne of poking fun at human behavior — principally Brits and their stereotypical staidness — as Paddington enters predictable circumstances and behaves unpredictably. The first film drew laughs in its depiction of Paddington on a London Underground escalator, the second with the bear bored of cafeteria food; in the third, other than a singular scene in a passport photo booth, the plot takes us so far from predictable, normal circumstances that it deprives itself of that key mechanism of humor.
The film also misses Hawkins as Mrs. Brown, who, alongside Paddington himself, was the emotional core of the first two films. Hawkins provided a constant quirkiness that verged on unhingedness and genuine sweetness. Though Mortimer gives a solid performance, her Mrs. Brown lacks the eccentricity and whimsy of Hawkins’.
Still, “Paddington in Peru” has some lovely — and humorous — moments, particularly those centered on marmalade. The film is filled with carefully crafted Wes Anderson-y shots and eye-catching visual touches, reintroducing the Browns through a dollhouse version of their home as seen in the first two films and touching on Henry and Mary’s sadness at becoming impending empty-nesters through beautiful animation of oil paintings. Its actors also do well — Bonneville is a reliable Henry and Olivia Colman is, well, Olivia Colman.
After all, “Paddington in Peru” is still “Paddington” — still funny and adorable and heartwarming in all the ways a good kids’ movie ought to be. And after eight years off-screen — so long that half the audience at my Saturday matinee showing had not yet been born when “Paddington” first came out — Paddington’s innocence and politeness still finds a way to charm viewers of all ages. Even if the sequel curse has finally reached “Paddington,” the worst of the three films — the ‘bear’ minimum, perhaps — still put a smile on my face.