Paddington in Peru is the third installment in the Paddington film series and the first to occur most predominantly outside of England. The Paddington series follows the great animation history of blending live action with animation, blurring the lines of fantasy and reality, and creating a magical world where anything is possible and acts of kindness and a marmalade sandwich can move mountains.
The first film finds Paddington setting off for London when his Aunt Lucy moves into a Home for Retired Bears. She sends him off with a tag around his neck like the children being sent in the trains from the Blitz, reading “please look after this bear, thank you.” Mary Brown (played by Sally Hawkins in Paddington and Paddington 2 and taken over by Emily Mortimer in Paddington in Peru) sees him at the station and is the one to bring him into their family and give him his name after the station. Paddington in Peru begins with Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) being summoned back to Peru because Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton) isn’t doing well. The entire Brown family, and Mrs. Bird (played by Julie Walters) goes with him, setting up the promise of his new family meeting the one that raised him. Only the audience is already aware that the Reverend Mother (played by Olivia Colman) at the Home for Retired Bears is up to something. So, it comes as no surprise that when the Brown’s arrive in Peru, Aunt Lucy is nowhere to be found and Paddington and company must go on a dangerous mission to find her.
There is a lot of kindness and forgiveness in the Paddington films. When push comes to shove, Paddington will give a “hard stare,” but if a character shows even an inkling of repentance, he is more than willing to bury the hatchet. That is shown in multiple instances in Paddington in Peru, like when he offers Hunter Cabot (played by Antonio Banderas) entrance to something after just running from him to keep him out after Hunter makes a change, and then the post-credit scene with Phoenix Buchanan (played by Hugh Grant).
The first Paddington film did a good job of balancing the family dynamic between all the different Browns and Paddington and letting each one have a moment with him to form a familial bond – BUT that first scene with Mary and subsequent scenes created the core relationship, the heart. Sally Hawkins did a wonderful job of creating a connection between Paddington and the Brown family, so it was going to be challenging for another actor to step into the role. One that Emily Mortimer took up with aplomb. She slipped into the role of Mary in a film that relied on her and her character to tie the emotional weight back to that early moment from the first film. Her performance is not the same as Sally Hawkins, and I would not want her to mimic it, but it feels like they are leading the characters from the same underlying warmth and that made the transition relatively seamless.
Each Paddington film has been a little more musical than the last, the first film had a diegetic song performed by street musicians that played over the montage of Paddington discovering the city and some non-diegetic needle drops. Paddington 2 had a full musical number for the end credits performed by Hugh Grant’s Phoenix Buchanan and other inmates. While it is completely over the top, it still felt grounded in the established Paddington world. Paddington in Peru has a musical number in the film itself performed by Olivia Colman’s Reverend Mother when she receives news that Paddington is coming to Peru. I love a musical, I come from music theatre, but I liked the musical rules that had felt established in Paddington, and this felt like it broke them because if characters could always break out into song, it feels like there are plenty of other characters that would have done so before. I can give it the benefit of the doubt as she was maybe doing her interpretation of a nun re: The Sound of Music and thus her musical number. To know for certain if this was a character choice or a change in direction, we’ll have to wait for further Paddington adventures.
It’s unclear, should there be future Paddington films, if the cast would remain the same. While this film cemented the familial bond between Paddington and the Browns, the cast change from Hawkins to Mortimer showed that as long as the heart of the story remains true, the films can bear cast changes. It is well known that Colin Firth was originally cast to voice Paddington but could not find the voice for the bear and stepped back, which is how the role eventually went to Whishaw.
Paddington in Peru is currently in theatres.
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