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After Michelangelo finished his work on the Sistine Chapel he never painted another ceiling. After Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon he almost immediately retired from NASA. And after Paul King directed “Paddington 2,” he likewise decided not to return for a sequel (opting instead to launch an all but identical franchise that basically just swapped out marmalade for candy). Students of history knew better than to expect that King would come back to helm a third installment, as the kind of people who redefine the boundaries of human potential are rarely interested in repeating themselves, but we still hoped that someone would take a crack at making “Paddington 3.”
The fact is that King tapped into a singular magic with his take on Michael Bond’s iconic British immigrant, but even the lesser spell that another filmmaker might cast with it would be preferable to depriving audiences another go-around with Ben Whishaw and the Brown family. That would be the case in any era, but it’s especially true at a time when “Harold and the Purple Crayon” is what passes for a live-action kids movie — I simply can’t bear the thought of an unemployed Paddington going MAGA for the grift.
In that light, I can’t be too upset that Dougal Wilson’s “Paddington in Peru” is a pale imitation of its predecessors, to the extent that “Paddington 3” makes “Paddington 1” look like “Paddington 2.” Much as I’d hoped that King’s “story by” credit might actually mean something, the reality is that he and his co-writer Simon Farnaby took the soul of this franchise with them when they went to “Wonka” — along with much of its slapstick humor, its sugary visual wit, and its devious sprinkle of Hugh Grant. Scribes Mark Burton, Jon Foster, and James Lamont do a valiant job of squeezing some extra jam out of the formula that King and co. left behind, but it can be hard to stomach the taste of old marmalade in a movie so eager to celebrate what really preserves.
Of course Paddington would prefer that we focus on the positive, as he still looks for the good in everything (and somehow, he finds it). To that end, the world would be a better place if more films went to such great lengths for a few errant morsel of the joy that “Paddington 2” continues to spread, and there’s no denying that even Paul King’s table scraps taste better than most of what family audiences have been served over the last six years. Severely diminished as it might seem in the shadow of the previous installment (don’t forget that “Paddington 2” dethroned “Citizen Kane” as the top-rated movie of all time on Rotten Tomatoes), “Paddington in Peru” isn’t a bad movie by any stretch — after all, we’re talking about a brisk and vibrant spectacle that features Olivia Colman as a singing nun and Antonio Banderas in unambiguous “Fitzcarraldo” cosplay.
Beyond that, however, the film’s pleasures are a bit harder to pin down. The problems start with the decision to forsake the immaculately recursive pleasures of “Paddington 2” in favor of a fumbling adventure that moves forward in a straight line and narrows Paddington’s search to a single target: his missing Aunt Lucy. His quest helps to bring the Brown family closer together at a time when it feels like they’ve started to drift apart, but taking that ultra-sincere bear out of London — and thrusting him deep into the Amazon jungle instead, away from all human characters save for the ones he brings with him — crucially denies us the fun of watching Paddington leave his sticky paw marks on the world around him. While the film takes pains to justify that decision by the end, its efforts to return Paddington to his roots only serve to remind us where he really belongs: Windsor Terrace.
That’s where “Paddington in Peru” begins (though the film pulls an “Irishman” with its on-screen “Lost in the Jungle” subtitle), and where it quickly settles into a familiar rhythm as we catch up with the Browns. The risk-averse Henry (Hugh Bonneville) is struggling to impress his daredevil new boss (a mildly amusing cameo role I won’t spoil here), while his wife Mary — now played by Emily Mortimer, an ideal replacement for Sally Hawkins even if the mere fact of the substitution makes it that much harder to forget the ersatz nature of this entire threequel — is busy lamenting how her family is fraying at the seams. Her inventive son Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) is now an Axe Bodyspray-pilled teenager who plays video games in his room all day, while her daughter Judy (Madeleine Harris) is on the cusp of heading off to college.
Paddington, meanwhile, has just become an official British citizen; the scene where he sits for his passport photo harkens back to the Chaplinesque pleasures of the previous films (though Wilson will later pay more explicit homage to Buster Keaton), while also setting the stage for a story that will interrogate the definition of “home” in several different respects. The timing almost seems too perfect when Paddington receives a letter from the Home for Retired Bears — written in secret by the facility’s ever-smiling Reverend Mother (Colman) — that implores him to come visit his beloved Aunt Lucy (again voiced by Imelda Staunton). It appears that she misses her nephew so much that she’s no longer acting like herself. And wouldn’t the Browns like to come along for company? Henry could show his bosses that he isn’t a complete scaredy-cat, and Mary would delight in the chance to be with her whole family before the new school year.
And so it’s off to Peru, or at least to the leafiest soundstages in the United Kingdom; a few days of shooting took place on location, where Wilson’s crew captured the plates used for the film’s not-so-convincing backgrounds, but anyone hoping to see a thoroughly “Paddington”-ized vision of South America will have to settle for the sub-“Jungle Cruise” sense of place we get here. The Home for Retired Bears is a wonderful set, however (I love that everyone there refers to Aunt Lucy by that name), and the ever-delightful Colman literally tap-dances through it with a toothy unctuousness that splits the difference between Mother Teresa and Phoenix Buchanan.
Her casting is a touch too obvious for a major supporting role in a franchise that has always done well to frame its stars in a new light (Josh Hartnett in “Trap” is the only 2024 performance that lives up to the “I didn’t know they could do that” magic of Hugh Grant’s work in “Paddington 2”), but all quibbles are forgotten by the time the Reverend Mother picks up a guitar and throws it way, way up into the air. While it’s true that “Paddington in Peru” suffers for deviating from the series’ usual rhythms, Colman’s early scenes are enough to make you wish that Wilson had been more radical with his choices rather than less — a full-blown musical, for example, might have been enough to paper over the elements missing from Paul King’s reign.
Alas, Aunt Lucy has disappeared into the jungle, and it isn’t long before Paddington and the Browns have set off after her, leaving only Julie Walters’ indomitable Mrs. Bird behind with the Reverend Mother. And who better to lead the British tourists on their quest than river guide Hunter Cabot (Banderas) and his teenage daughter Gina (“The Boogeyman” actress Carla Tous). Unlike Knuckles McGinty or many of the other side characters from “Paddington 2,” Hunter isn’t a tough customer for Paddington to cure with a marmalade sandwich, he’s a decent guy who just happens to be haunted by the spirits of his ancestors (a high-potential, low-reward visual gag that Wilson only plays for a few polite laughs), who insist that he’ll bring terrible shame upon the family name if he fails to discover El Dorado. And wouldn’t you know it, the bear who just chartered his boat has the key to finding it.
Amusing as it is to watch Banderas go full Gollum as he bickers with his conquistador ancestor, it’s hard to understand why the movie doesn’t stretch further into “Kind Hearts and Coronets” territory by doing more to include the rest of Hunter’s family tree. Perhaps that’s why the character feels so one-dimensional compared to the franchise’s previous antagonists — that and the script’s abject failure to involve Gina in the story’s emotional stakes.
There’s a nice thematic echo to the fact that Hunter and Paddington are both trying to honor their family heritages in their own way (a detail that only comes into focus on Paddington’s side during the final minutes), but “Paddington in Peru” lacks the Rube Goldberg-like precision required to reward such underlying details, and the setpieces that Wilson constructs around them to feel entertainingly antic rather than divinely inspired. The texture just isn’t there to support the comic energy these characters are capable of, in large part because of the bizarre dearth of jokes; while always pleasant and never boring, Wilson’s film has so much ground to cover — rivers to ford, mountains to climb, llamas to ride — that it opts for a warmly comedic tone in lieu of more specific beats, only to compensate for its absence of laughs with a final act that sacrifices the funny bone to go straight for the heartstrings. That’s when the question of what “home” really means comes to the fore, but just so that it can gently reaffirm what Paddington already knew in his bones at the start of the movie.
On its own, “Paddington in Peru” is a fun if forgettable matinee for the whole family to enjoy, but — like its hero and its villain alike — the movie belongs to a tradition that it implores us to cherish like an heirloom, and it would be a direct contradiction of its story to orphan it from the greater context of its creation. At the same time, fans would still do well to appreciate the movie on its own terms while they can, as a mid-credits scene at the very end of the film makes it crushingly obvious just how much this chapter suffers in comparison to the ones before it.
No, this isn’t the Paddington sequel we wanted, but there are dollops of real joy to be found in the fact that it sincerely aspired to be, and in the fact that so many people — newcomers and franchise staples alike — gamely threw themselves into a project so unlikely to make good on the promise of its myth that Wilson might as well have been searching for real El Dorado itself. In lieu of any memorable lines from this movie, I find myself returning to something the Fantastic Mr. Fox once said: “These giblets come from artificial squab, and even these apples look fake — but at least they’ve got stars on them.”
Grade: C+
“Paddington in Peru” will be released in the U.K. on Friday, November 8. Sony Pictures will release it in U.S. theaters on Friday, January 17.
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