Review: PADDINGTON

PADDINGTON  (FAMILY/FANTASY-COMEDY)
3.5 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Paul King
Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Ben Winshaw (voice), Madeline Harris, Samuel Joslin, Julie Walters, Nicole Kidman, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Matt Lucas
Rated PG for mild action and rude humor.
95 minutes
Verdict: It's the same story that we've seen many times before in low-rent "family" films, but now done with witty British humor, endearing charm and playful imagination that combine to make for superb family entertainment.
YOU MAY ENJOY PADDINGTON IF YOU LIKED:
CURIOUS GEORGE  (2006)
HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE  (2001)
STUART LITTLE  (1999)
MATILDA  (1996)
CHARLOTTE'S WEB  (2006)

There have been plenty of family movies about otherwise ordinary families and an accident-prone computer-animated character who wrecks their lives but ultimately becomes one of the family.  STUART LITTLE, GARFIELD, ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS, the list goes on, and they're all cut from the same cloth, ranging in quality from terrible to mediocre.  By all rights, PADDINGTON, adapted from the classic "Paddington Bear" children's book series written by Michael Bond, ought to have been the same, and frankly, it looked like it would be.  The day that the first publicity image featuring the CGI bear was released in June 2014, it became an internet meme called "Creepy Paddington", placing the bear in the background of classic horror movie scenes and other images.  In fact, PADDINGTON, for the most part, follows the well-worn formula of those other movies, but the crucial difference is that PADDINGTON is a very funny, imaginative and hopelessly endearing family film.
Years ago, in the deep jungles of darkest Peru, an English explorer discovers a family of intelligent bears who he teaches to speak English and introduces to orange marmalade and English manners.  When he leaves, he tells the bears, that they will always be welcome when they visit London.  Years later, in the present day, the bears are raising their nephew, Paddington (voiced by Ben Winshaw, after the original voice, Colin Firth dropped out, feeling his voice did not fit the realized character), making marmalade and listening to the explorer's old recorded social lessons.  When an earthquake destroys their jungle home, they tell Paddington to go travel to London, where he'll surely be taken in and given a home by a kind English family.  It turns out though that London has changed a good deal, and is not the friendly place that Paddington had expected, but he catches a break when he encounters the Brown family.  Mrs. Mary Brown (Sally Hawkins) is sweet-natured and eager to help, but her husband, Mr. Henry Paddington (Hugh Bonneville) is more apprehensive, especially when Paddington proves to be particularly accident-prone.  They take him in temporarily, while Paddington tries to find the explorer who promised his family a home in London years ago, but an spectacularly evil taxidermist (Nicole Kidman) hears about the remarkable bear and is desperate to get him for her collection.

The movie covers plenty of well-worn family movie territory, and I'm not going to pretend that the British accents don't significantly contribute to the sense of legitimacy that American voices might not, but what really matters is that the makers of PADDINGTON aren't lazy about it.  The familiarities have their own twists, and the humor is charming with a sharp, dry British wit.
It's a movie with a delightfully weird sensibility, in tone, content and visual style, managing the tricky balancing act of delivering storybook-styled charm and whimsy with over-the-top comic set-pieces; the best of the latter involving Nicole Kidman's excellent turn as the super villain taxidermist, Millicent, and the message about tolerance and immigration is smartly handled and never heavy-handed, treated in an insightful but playful manner.
It's all something we've seen before, the classic children's character updated for the modern world in a formulaic story with slapstick and easy morality, but it excels by virtue of imagination, humor and heart.