Paddington in Peru: a good-hearted but predictable instalment in the furry franchise

We’re going on a bear hunt. After two fine London-based Paddington films, this sweet but increasingly generic furry franchise has taken the predictable lure of an exotic location, and since we can’t go around it, we have to go through it. Paddington, now proud possessor of a blue British passport (his Chaplinesque photo-booth chaos the film’s only memorable slapstick) has been summoned to Peru with the Browns to comfort his Aunt Lucy in the Home for Aged Bears. 

Their Peruvian-stereotype-spattered bear hunt begins when Olivia Colman’s relentlessly smiley Reverend Mother dispatches them down the Amazon, where Aunt Lucy has vanished on a jungle quest. But the other thing that’s gone missing abroad is the film series’s distinctive, very English take on what an immigrant bear can teach Brits. Seeing the Browns as Brit fish out of (or in) water when dunked in the Amazon, or overcoming tarantula terrors to land a plane, feels rather less original. Inserting their riverboat captain Hunter Cabot (a playful Antonio Banderas) as an El Dorado-seeker secretly using Paddington’s bear-skills to find treasure, shunts the story into well-worn Jungle Cruise (2021) and Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019) territory. Much hiking and not enough hilarity ensue, as Paddington inevitably loses the Browns on their long-seeming trek through the glossy, CGI-confected jungle.  

Despite ditching its unique selling point, Paddington in Peru slavishly reproduces the look of its successful predecessors. First-time feature director Dougal Wilson (veteran of heart-warming John Lewis Xmas ads) cleaves closely to Paul King’s visual template. So the film retains its adorable, slightly retro styling, though a predictable Steamboat Bill Jr homage and an Indiana Jones-style giant stone ball chase, lack King’s visual wit. Emily Mortimer, almost imperceptibly replacing Sally Hawkins as a warm, family-obsessed Mary Brown, isn’t allowed any new tricks either. 

What’s also missing tonally is the dash of dread (psycho opponents, deathly peril) that gave previous Paddingtons a thrilling jolt of jeopardy that’s absent from these drawn-out comedy chases and cuddly come-uppances. The two comic antagonists operating here prompt snickers not shivers. The Rev Mother has a pop-eyed wily sincerity, while Cabot vacillates between gold-hunger and a desire to keep a promise to neglected daughter Gina. Bullied by his greedy ghostly Conquistador ancestor (winkingly played by Banderas), Cabot’s toxic family expectations form part of the ethics lesson that’s as integral to a Paddington movie as his Hard Stare. 

Paddington’s own learning curve dutifully nods at the immigrant experience of reconciling two homelands, but can’t give this third outing the emotional heft it needs to sit alongside its heart-warming forebears. 

► Paddington in Peru arrives in UK cinemas 8 November.