Ben Whishaw Returns as Belvoed Bear

We could quibble and debate this all day, but barring the odd exception like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban or Toy Story 3, third installments in film franchises seldom excel their predecessors in quality. And so it is with a sense of inevitable disappointment, like children knowing that their parents’ current financial difficulties will mean less exciting holiday presents this year, that we come to unpack Paddington in Peru.

The sequel is certainly no disgrace. It has many charming elements and qualities, including spectacular scenery, a child-friendly adventure story and Olivia Colman as a manically grinning, occasionally singing, nun. But Paddington in Peru is burdened with the unenviable task of following up two near-perfect predecessors, Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017).

Those works took some much loved but decidedly dusty intellectual property (Michael Bond’s first book, A Bear Called Paddington was first published in 1958) and found a way to both honor its poky, quintessentially British roots while also celebrating the cultural diversity of contemporary London — a metropolis welcoming of immigrants of all races, cultures and species, even young bears from Peru. Both were directed by Paul King, who’s since left to reinvent Willy Wonka. So this latest installment has been passed on to British commercials and music video director Dougal Wilson, best known locally for his Christmas-time advertisements for department store John Lewis, including that one featuring a boxer dog on a trampoline.

While Paddington in Peru sadly lacks the absurdist wit and decidedly dark edge that elevated the first two Paddington movies, it’s serviceable enough given its limitations. Wilson’s background in advertising perhaps means he knows how to stay on brand, in every sense, even while serving up a serious diversion from the formula. Because this film requires our ursine hero (once again a peerlessly executed CGI creation voiced by Ben Whishaw) to leave behind pastel-colored Windsor Gardens and return to his homeland, and since his adopted family, the Browns, come with him, it means a different school of fish are out of water this go round. The result may be a loss in tea-and-crumpet coziness, but a net gain in terms of appeal to Latin American markets.

After a prologue that flashes back to Paddington’s childhood, showing how his pre-marmaladic fixation on orange citrus fruits separated him from his family and swept him into the care of bears Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton) and the now-late Uncle Pastuzo (Michael Gambon), Paddington in the present day receives a curious letter from the Reverend Mother (Colman) who runs the retirement home for aged bears back in Peru.

She explains that Lucy seems not herself lately, suggesting she may be missing Paddington all too keenly. Since he only just got his own British passport, the easily guilt-tripped cub decides to visit his aunt. Mary Brown (Emily Mortimer, bringing a different but pleasing energy to the role originated by Sally Hawkins), concerned that the brood is drifting apart as the children grow up, persuades the whole family to come along, including housekeeper Mrs. Bird (Julie Walters).

Traveling “by map,” as the Muppets indelibly described the process of showing characters’ journeys using animated figures traversing an atlas, the Browns arrive at the rest home only to discover that Lucy has already inexplicably left. According to the Reverend Mother, who despite her gurning display of friendliness can’t help using telling words like “suspicious,” Lucy went off into the jungle, so the family decide to track her down.

This requires hiring a boat for the riverine part of the journey, helmed by a Spaniard named Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas) and crewed by his daughter Gina (Carla Tous). But while Cabot, not unlike the Reverend Mother, seems amiable enough, he has a habit of talking when no one is looking to his dead relatives, including a conquistador, a missionary and an aviatrix. All are also played by Banderas and all are equally afflicted with gold fever, an unquenchable desire to find El Dorado and the golden treasures the Incas were rumored to have left behind somewhere in the region.

Given the weird psychology that drove the antagonists in the earlier films — a crazed lady taxidermist and then a psychopathic thespian, respectively — the villains’ thirst for riches here seems a little rote, while the use of El Dorado as a device just piles cliché on top of triteness. Paddington in Peru is altogether a less eccentric, less original work, but that arguably makes it more accessible to younger viewers who are generally well-served by the evenly distributed bouts of physical comedy. An opening sequence featuring Paddington trying to take his passport photo in a booth is niftily edited, and Wilson ups the ante as the film goes on with a series of inventively conceived accidents that lead to Paddington sinking the boat and later being chased through an abandoned Incan city (Machu Picchu was used for location work but not named as such onscreen).

The animation on Paddington is so detailed down to every bit of fur, and so well-integrated with the live-action figures and plate-generated backdrops, you almost forget that the Buster Keaton and Steve McQueen works to which the movie’s climactic gag pays tribute originally made an impact because they were physical stunts — ones that posed a serious risk that a real-world actor might be crushed by falling masonry, not a CGI bear.  

If nothing else, Paddington in Peru makes a persuasive case that awards-bestowing bodies like the American Academy need to start recognizing the achievement of visual effects-generated “performances.” The performance that’s far and away most memorable here, aside from Colman’s crazed nun, is that of the title character — a collaborative effort by animation director Pablo Grillo, the visual effects teams, and Whishaw’s voice performance. He probably gets more close-ups than any of the human actors.

Although returning players Hugh Bonneville, Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin as the other three Brown family members make significant contributions along with Mortimer, no one can hold the screen with a hard stare like Paddington. He pulls off one his best here, a perfectly calibrated study in facial movement, lighting (particularly in the brown-gold glitter of his eyes) and comic timing.