Like an awful lot of people, I went to see Paddington in Peru this weekend and – anaemic reviews be damned! – I had a pretty good time. Paddington’s third outing is definitely a drop off from the first two (though those, especially the second, set an almost impossibly high bar). It missed the lightness of touch of director Paul King, who just has a writing credit this time around. The jokes weren’t quite as precise, the baddies not quite as memorable, and the plot – involving ancient Peruvian relics, magic bracelets and steamboat captains haunted by the failures of their ancestors – felt a little convoluted.
Still, it was preferable to the E-number waterboarding that watching most children’s films feels like. The film is bright-eyed, inventive, charitable – and is about something, gently probing at the idea of what constitutes “home” for people who have migrated. The franchise seems to be settling into a comfortable, family friendly middle-agedness – there will probably be at least another three of four instalments, and we’ll soon struggle to find much to say about them.
