Paddington Roars Onto The Big Screen
If you asked anyone who his or her favourite anthropomorphised bear named after a popular British tube station that tries to sell you Marmite was, most would say Paddington Bear (though Blackfriar Bear is clearly rising in popularity). Inevitably someone would take this loveable bear and put him on the big screen, and with many adaptations of British television cartoons having gone sour in the past there is a lot of pressure on Paul King’s Paddington to be a success. After watching a special screening, the reaction was a bit mixed.
Paddington Bear has been engraved in British animation history, voted in 2012 as Britain’s best animated character, so it’s only fair he’s gotten his shot at the big screen. It makes quite an impact; This adaptation is quite different to many other adaptations of TV shows, in a mostly pleasant way. Whilst many are bright, colourful and in-your-face, Paddington is restrained, calm and actually a lot darker than many others. Paddington is a very shy, withdrawn film which boasts it’s British-ness proudly. Americanised adaptations have a tendency to lose the unique touch that made the originals great, trying to modernise their tone as well as the films themselves. But Paddington is proudly quiet and, in doing so, excels where other films failed, taking the 1950s tone and putting it in a 2010s story.
This is not the traditional Paddington we know. however. They’ve taken the Teddy out of the Teddy Bear and now Paddington is an ACTUAL bear (he roars as well as talks). His clumsiness is also back, however at times it can feel very fake and forced in a way that suggests the writers had simply put it in for nostalgic reasons. These moments felt boring and slightly cliché, as did the writing at times. It didn’t take long to notice the predictable dialogue and commonly-used jokes within the script, though some truly comedic moments made up for that.
One of the highlights of watching Paddington was always being able to see the human hand that went into creating him. The work behind the scenes – whether it was in 2D or stop-motion – was clear. Even when dealing with CG, Paddington felt very real and you could tell from the flawlessness of the completed animation that a lot of hard-working artists had contributed to this; Every hair and piece of fur worked brilliantly and they really made the most of the technology that was available to them.
Overall, a good film. Different to many adaptations out there, but its British quirk sets it apart from the rest. It’s cute, it’s quiet and it most definitely doesn’t ruin the brilliant legacy Paddington Bear has had all these years.