Written by Michael Clawson

80/100

Paddington, an immensely huggable young Peruvian bear, ventures to London in search of a family after an earthquake destroys his home in the rain forest. People aren’t quite as nice or welcoming as he thought they’d be when he first arrives, but then he hits the jackpot: enter Sally Hawkins, as irresistible as ever, as Mrs. Brown, an artist who welcomes Paddington into her family’s home with more warmth and kindness than any immigrant could hope for.

Mr. Brown and his children are as skeptical as one might expect them to be about co-habitating with a bear (the daughter thinks Paddington will be an embarrassment, Mr. Brown, who’s hilarious, thinks he’s a liability to the house and kids), but eventually they come around. The whimsical and colorful design of the Brown household and the removal of walls for tracking shots from room to room are evocative of a Wes Anderson movie, but whereas Anderson deliberately distances you from the spaces he builds, Paul King invites you in. The spiral staircase at the center of the house is up against a floor to ceiling wall decal of a tree with pink leaves that you want to reach out and touch, and that you can imagine reminds Paddington of his home and relatives when he climbs the banister (instead of taking the stairs as the humans do).

Paddington’s search for the British explorer who once visited his Peruvian homeland and the threat of a taxidermist (Nicole Kidman, delightfully icy) hunting Paddington give the narrative its forward momentum, but its the time spent in the Brown household that gives the film its most memorable charm. There are a handful of fish-out-of-water (or bear-out-of-the-rainforest?) bits that employ comic timing and musical cues to great effect (such as Paddington’s first experience with a human’s bathroom, him snatching a stranger’s dog when he reads a “Dogs Must Be Carried” sign next to an escalator, the entirety of a bank heist-like sequence at a geographical society building), but it’s the image of a cozy attic bedroom that the Browns make up for Paddington, and Hawkins poking her head up through the ceiling to check on him, that distill the movie’s unique loveliness.

Paddington Trailer