Kindness and Decency Win

‘Paddington 2” recently became the best reviewed movie in Rotten Tomatoes’ history. Ousting “Toy Story 2” from the top spot — 167 “fresh” reviews to 163 — the return of the little bear from “Darkest Peru” is a delight for movie lovers and audiences seeking a film that focuses on kindness, decency and good manners in these incredibly unkind and indecent times. 

And don’t think writer/director Paul King’s two Paddington films aren’t political. They are pro-immigration rallying cries for a multicultural nation. After all, the Brown’s (Paddington’s adoptive family, who found him alone and homeless in the eponymous railway station) next-door neighbor rants against immigrants. The rest of the neighborhood takes the diminutive bear to their hearts.

  “Paddington 2” is lighter and funnier than the first movie, with its villainess, Millicent Clyde (Nicole Kidman), determined to stuff and display Paddington in her museum. In his new outing, Paddington wants enough money to buy a pop-up book for his Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday at the Home for Retired Bears in Lima. Our hero sets out to earn the money through a series of ill-fated odd jobs. But then the book is snatched away by Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant), a cheerfully self-satisfied, out-of-work actor who believes the book holds the key to finding a treasure.

Through a series of police mistakes, Paddington is arrested, tried and sent to prison for the theft. (On his first night in jail, he asks a guard to read him a bedtime story, as Mrs. Brown always did.) Somehow his honesty and beguiling naiveté help him survive the grueling prison routine. Now it’s up to the Browns to prove Paddington innocent.

The film retains the first film’s Keatonesque physical comedy, but it is visually more arresting. King’s gelato color palette owes a good deal to Wes Anderson (“Grand Budapest Hotel”), but the precise framing is all his own. His cast of British A-list actors — Sally Hawkins and Hugh Bonneville as the Browns, the magnificent Julie Walters as their housekeeper — is spot on. Ben Whishaw (Q in Daniel Craig’s James Bond movies) voices Paddington — it takes many dozens of animators, artisans and technicians to synchronize his voice and expressions with the bear — perfectly.

Grant is sublime. Preening, masquerading as a nun, a man in armor, even a dog, he steals the movie with effortless wit, charm and elan. He even dances in pink satin trousers under the credits.

What saves the film from too much sweetness is King’s willingness to take both adults and children out of their comfort zones. He taps our fears of desertion, disappointment, even death, before resolving the story with a thrillingly tense underwater escape sequence. Kindness and good manners do indeed win. 

“Paddington 2” is playing widely.