It’s hard to overstate just how ubiquitous the Paddington films––particularly the 2017 sequel––have been in the British cultural consciousness over the last decade. Not simply massive box-office successes experienced by many more millions through their seemingly weekly BBC One reruns, the big-screen adventures of the mild-mannered bear have had a deeply bizarre second life. The final months of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, from the Platinum Jubilee marking 70 years on the throne to her death in September 2022, were both overshadowed by the character. In the former, it was a short film of Liz having tea and marmalade sandwiches with the CGI creation––which was subsequently voted the British public’s favorite TV moment of that year––and in the latter, there was a meme in which Paddington walked the monarch to the afterlife. On British Twitter, Paddington is now viewed as a benevolent angel of death; there isn’t a celebrity or minor public figure to have died since that hasn’t been guided to the pearly gates by him.
In short, whether taken as sincere or deeply ironic, the cultural footprint of Paddington has long crossed over into insufferable territory. But long before the character was photoshopped into a new movie or TV show every day by a guy who still hasn’t forgotten, heralded as the poster child for “nicecore” cinema, or had partnered with the UK equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security in a marketing campaign, he was simply at the center of two great, eminently rewatchable family films. The concept of Paddington––a cuddly mascot who preaches the importance of being “kind and polite,” especially in the face of adversity––has made it easy to be retroactively cynical towards director Paul King’s films: this message couldn’t be less geared towards our current moment. But the two Paddington adventures to date haven’t soured as you’d expect. They’re consistently funny, wildly inventive, and filled with genuine danger from which other contemporary children’s films shy away. They’ve remained staples for a reason, arguably because of how defiantly out-of-step they are with the modern world.
Arriving seven years after the first sequel, the already-impossible task of Paddington in Peru––to merely live up to its predecessors––has only become more of an uphill climb after much-frenzied anticipation and backlash. Divorcing director Dougal Wilson’s film from the hype and surprising amount of discourse surrounding it is a harder task than expected in this light. It’s clearly a disappointment compared to the two King-directed efforts, but is not without moments of comic inspiration, enjoyable supporting performances, and well-engineered adventure blockbuster set pieces. For much of the runtime I found myself trying to parse how I would feel on a second viewing, when I’d be less concerned with the fact that it doesn’t live up to Paddington 2. That was right up until it ended on a note that made it clear this film can’t help but live in the shadow of the films which came before.
Paddington in Peru has the same blockbuster-sequel issue as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: there may be many enjoyable things about it, but it makes the misstep of briefly bringing back a supporting player from a previous movie, and it’s evident nothing else in the film is operating at their level. Before we get there, though, we’re reintroduced to Paddington (voiced once again by Ben Whishaw) and the Brown family shortly after the lovable bear has been granted UK citizenship. Not long after he gets his passport, a letter comes through from the Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman) who runs the Home for Retired Bears in Peru, concerned that Paddington’s Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton) has begun acting strangely. The family flies off to South America, but when they arrive, discover she’s gone missing, leaving clues to her whereabouts deep in the Amazon rain forest. With the help of explorer-turned-tourist-boat captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas), they decide to make the journey into uncharted territory to find her. Soon enough, Hunter becomes convinced that Aunt Lucy is secretly guiding them to the lost city of El Dorado and goes insane in the process.
Whereas the previous Paddington films cast their villains against type––with Hugh Grant now regularly portraying a villain due to the strength of that comic performance––this threequel plays it much safer. Banderas is the clear standout, but it’s not a stretch of the imagination to picture him as an egotistical explorer; he’s been voicing a similarly self-centered sidekick in the Shrek universe for nearly 20 years now. The film does have fun pushing that archetype beyond its limits, writing the character as a broadly comic spin on Klaus Kinski’s Fitzcarraldo, so catastrophically obsessed with completing a mission that has doomed generations of his explorer family before him that he’s lost all grip on reality. And extra credit where credit it’s due: this does include a flashback suggestion that his forefathers all succumbed to cannibalism in the jungle.
But this is one of the few moments where Paddington in Peru seems openly willing to venture into the same dark territory as the films before it, which repeatedly lingered just a moment too long on shots of the bear about to face his death. As cuddly as those movies are stereotyped as being, they have far more peril than most blockbusters for kids, harking back to the era of Spielberg and Dante but with a decisively British flavor. Paddington in Peru leans too comic to the point of being disarming from the offset, touching on the same directorial influences as King while choosing to pay obvious homage to them instead; one third-act chase sequence underlines this with an extended nod to the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The tear-jerking moments don’t hit quite as hard, either, which is the bigger surprise considering how this story is intended as an emotional journey home for Paddington, but this fails to function as an immigrant narrative because of how much it’s overshadowed by the feature-length treasure hunt. The preceding film tackled a more distinct story about the immigrant experience entirely through Paddington wanting to buy a gift for his visiting relative and proved far more moving because of that childlike simplicity. Here, the eyes are off the ball and the story never feels quite as grounded in the same heart.
Maybe over years of endless TV reruns, Paddington in Peru will start satisfying as much as the two films that came before. On first viewing, it feels like a big step down, with frequent glimmers of a much more satisfying family adventure throughout.
Paddington in Peru opens on November 8 in the U.K. and on January 17 in the U.S.