#83 PADDINGTON BEAR: THE MOVIE

#83 PADDINGTON BEAR: THE MOVIE

Starring, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Nicole Kidman, Peter Capaldi, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent and a positively who's who of the British acting community, see how many you can spot.

Written by Paul King and Hammish McColl and directed by Paul King. 95 minutes long.

It's what the world, as a singular entity has been crying out for, indeed it's what the occupy Hong Kong demonstration is all about! It's the origin story of Paddington Bear, a bear orphaned at an early age and raised in the rain forest of deepest, darkest Peru to be his race's most supreme warrior and crime fighter. Now, he's in England to thwart the evil intentions of a master, clown-faced criminal hell-bent on triggering the San Andreas fault line and clean up on some prime sea front real estate.

Oh, no, wait. That's Superman and Batman.

This is Paddington Bear, Michael Bond's sublime creation brought to life in the 21st Century and all that that sentence threatens...

I went into this expecting to hate it, the trailer looked foul, my god they'd managed to shoehorn in Nicole Kidman as some sort of demented Cruela Deville character and in the place of Bond's glorious silliness there seemed to be a skateboarding bear. So, imagine my suprise when i left the cinema an hour and a half later, feeling a happy warm glow in my chest and feeling love for the whole bastard human race. Bastards.

Damn it, I loved it. I loved its ridiculous faux Britishness, the nonsense of it all. The silly gags and slapstick adventures, but most of all I just loved the little bear, voiced brilliantly by Ben Whishaw. He's a delightful and wonderful CGI creation, staggeringly polite and not the bumbling, stupid fucktard I was convinced he'd be transformed into. I even loved his unnecessary origin story, although it also left me a little sad.

Go and see it, it's lovely.

9/10

But after a weekend of this I need to see something violent and horrible soon or I'm going to burst.