Paddington Bear

The 2014 film Paddington Bear (dir. Paul King) is based on Michael Bond’s stories about the Peruvian bear.  The illustrator Peggy Fornum gave Paddington his visual image, which the film adopts.  The film adopts a few other elements of the stories: Paddington’s background, his discovery at a British train station by the Brown family, and his introduction to life in London.  I remember reading these stories to my children.  There’s not much that remains of them in the film, other than Paddington’s kind and stiff upper lip British character, and a comical scene involving an overfilled bathtub. Instead, the film has modernized the stories and given the bear an arch nemesis: Millicent Clyde (Nicole Kidman), who collects specimens of animals from across the globe—she kills and has them mounted.  Paddington represents her most sought-after specimen, and much of the film is devoted to her efforts to capture him.  The movie, with its threat of a brutal fate for the bear, is far more terrifying than the books.  The stories themselves are whimsically humorous, and the film often captures that whimsicality, but its dark dimensions dominate the latter portions. 

In the end, the live-action film is a heartwarming family drama tinged with Psycho.  Actors such as Sally Hawkins, as Mrs. Brown, Hugh Bonneville, as Mr. Brown, and Jim Broadbent as Mr. Gruber lift the film, Sally Hawkins in particular.  Ben Whishaw is a charming voice for Paddington, who himself is DGI or stop action, I’m not sure which. I enjoyed the film but wouldn’t show it to my young grandchildren just yet.