The Weinstein Company

What is this bear up to? The CGI star of Paddington, based on the beloved children’s books by Michael Bond, is holding on to a toilet, in the midst of a destructive episode in the home of the Brown family, who has at least temporarily provided this homeless creature with food and shelter. I completely understand if the idea of a bear cleaning his ears with toothbrushes, drinking out of a toilet, and riding in a claw foot tub down the rapids of a spiral staircase is not your idea of cinematic magic. But Paddington is not unbearable, despite the fact that the aforementioned bath time hijinks are featured prominently in the trailers.

A promising introduction is wonderfully silly, with black and white newsreel footage of an expedition into “darkest Peru” led by a British explorer-narrator who tells of journeying with “a modest time piece and a travel piano,” which turns out to be a grandfather clock and a baby grand. This is already more humor than you might expect from the film, and that comes not from its producer David Heyman (Harry Potter), but from director/co-writer Paul King. King directed television series and stage tours featuring the British comedy troupe The Mighty Boosh, and there are hints of that dry humor sprinkled like bonbons in a forest of madcap CGI.

This pseudo-archival footage introduces the bear’s aunt and uncle (voiced by Michael Gambon and Imelda Staunton) and explains the bear’s fondness for marmalade. But it also establishes this CGI movie as a film with one foot in the past, reveling in antique shops, mechanical gears and a pneumatic tube system.

Boo! Hissss! (The Winstein Company)

The trailers emphasize silly slapstick, but there is also a hint of the melancholy that hangs over the film. Specifically, in a shot of Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) sitting alone on a train station platform wondering when he will find a home. The slapstick, after all, comes from Paddington’s utter confusion at modern conveniences like plumbing and escalators. The former resident of Darkest Peru is thoroughly unequipped to face London, but he soldiers on despite setbacks, resistance, and the evil taxidermist (Nicole Kidman) who trains her sights on the errant bear. (This is, strangely, the second children’s movie I’ve seen recently that involves an evil taxidermist subplot with its fuzzy hero, the first being the Korean feature Hearty Paws 2—a film that invokes Wong Kar-Wai and Lars Von Trier, but that’s another story altogether).

The movie has some visually inventive touches, including a cutaway view of the Brown house. You’ve seen this kind of thing before, but this doll’s house view suggests both a Joseph Cornell box and the outsiderness of the furry Peruvian immigrant, alienated in a completely foreign land whose people are afraid to let him use the bathroom. Paddington eventually gets lost in Scooby Doo plot territory, but at heart it’s a story of a young bear trying to find his way in a new world.

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Paddington
Directed by Paul King
Written by Paul King and Hamish McColl
With Ben Whishaw, Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Nicole Kidman.
Rated PG for mild action and rude humor
Running time: 95 minutes
Opens today at a multiplex near you.