Pop Culture Happy Hour - Paddington In Peru

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

In the new movie Paddington In Peru, Paddington Bear and the Brown family fly across the globe, into the wilds of Peru, in search of Paddington's Aunt Lucy. Along the way, they meet a not-remotely-suspicious singing nun (Olivia Colman) and a boat captain (Antonio Banderas). The adventure that follows involves lost treasure and narrow escapes — and leads to new revelations about Paddington's past, and a new appreciation for what it means to be home.In the run-up to the Oscars, Pop Culture Happy Hour is watching all 10 best picture nominees – and you're invited to join us! Sign up for the NPR Movie Club newsletter series and tell us what you thought of the movies you watched this week. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSubscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhourSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Paddington Bear, you know him, he's got a hat, a coat, a thing for Marmalade, and when pressed, a hard stare. Is back, the new movie Paddington in Peru, flies him and his family across the globe into the wilds of Peru. Together they embark on a search for Paddington's Aunt Lucy, who's gone missing. Along the way, they meet a not remotely suspicious singing nun, played by Olivia Coleman, and an even less suspicious boat captain played by Antonio Banderas. I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Paddington in Peru on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is freelance music and culture journalist Rihanna Cruz. Hey, Rihanna.

Howdy. Howdy. Also with us is Jeff Yang. He's a cultural critic and author of The Golden Screen, the Movies that Made Asian America. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Glenn. Great to have you both. Paddington in Peru is the third film in which Ben Wischaw voices the beloved and terribly, terribly British bear.

In this one, he's still living with. with the Brown family in London when he receives a letter from a nun played by a rubber-faced, Olivia Coleman. She runs the home for retired bears where his Aunt Lucy lives, and she's concerned about the old gal. The Brown's fly to Peru to discover

that Aunt Lucy's gone missing but left behind a mysterious map. They trek into the jungle to look for her aided by a boat captain named Hunter who is literally haunted by his past. He's played by Antonio Bandaris. The adventure that follows involving lost treasure, ancient

Relics, narrow escapes, and as always, Paddington's deeply British sensibility, leads them to new revelations about Paddington's past and a new appreciation for what it means to be home. All that, plus a theme song sung by a bunch of nuns. We get the name of the film in the theme song like it's a Bond movie. Paddington in Peru is in theaters now. Rihanna kick us off. What do you think? I liked it, Glenn.

I enjoyed Paddington in Peru. I like that the movie focuses on the fact that Paddington, is a Latino icon. He's from Peru. A lot of people erase this in favor of his British tendencies, which I understand, but I like that this movie got him back to his roots in Peru. I really enjoyed it. Okay. How about you, Jeff? Well, okay, so it's hard to match Paddington II, which is rightly considered one of the best films the late 2010s and maybe one of the best children's films ever. It's like the Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy, right? I have to say that this film did everything it needed to to be a Paddington movie. And honestly, even in terms of

it's kind of, you know, a reminiscence in some ways of P2, there's a sense in which if you can't beat it, just sort of duplicate it. Because despite the new and exotic setting and, you know, the structure and plot of Paddington 3, you know, Paddington Peru is kind of similar. It's like right down to the sort of MacGuffin of treasure hunting and Aft Bowl good guy turned bad guy who has to appear in a whole bunch of costumes. Like, if you loved P2, you will vibe with this film, I think. I'm obsessed with abbreviating it to P2.

I think that's awesome. This time it's personal. I come down very similarly to both of you. I think it's probably the weakest of the three Paddington films, but it is still a very, very, very strong movie. It's still swimming in this delightful British sensibility. I think in a way, you know, kind of going into this film, I felt like it had two minor strikes.

against it. One, it's following P2, as Jeff said, a truly superior children's film for everyone, a delightful streaming romp, a delightful airplane movie, you know, with that fantastic Hugh Grant performance. This is trying to follow that. It's doing a thing that a lot of sequels like this find themselves doing, which is taking these characters you love, removing them from a setting you love them in, and it's kind of forcing you to get used to them on this adventure that is, is taking them away from this place that you love spending time in. And for me, I think it largely gets around that by kind of lifting the whole family out and having the whole family take an adventure together.

That mitigates some of my frustration with a lot of those kind of sequels. But in general, man, you know, even with those like slight caveats against it, it's a pretty delightful movie. I mean, you've got Olivia Coleman who brings kind of this, same level of Daffy commitment to this that she might bring, say, to the favorite or any number of major and minor films in between. You know, you have these very, very committed character actors being very, very committed in the service of a movie that is still, like the other Paddington films, fundamentally kind and decent and warm. So, hey, I'm here for it.

Okay, yeah. I get what you're all saying. My issue with this film comes down to what Steve was mentioning. I think this film is the inflection point where a series of stories becomes a franchise. And in that inflection point is where it starts to lose me for exactly the reasons you outlined, Stephen. I mean, okay, to be fair, it was always going to be hard to follow Paddington, too, as you mentioned. Leave aside how good that film is. I mean, it became a kind of extremely online thing to love Paddington, too, to talk about how many times you saw it, to make it your identity, non-ironically, or mostly non-ironically. It wasn't insincere, but it was performative, it was like the TikTok dance of cinema.

And whenever there's that much kind of meta-social media chaff in the air surrounding a film or an event, what gets lost is that Paddington 2 is legit fun. We all agree that Rotten Tomato Scores don't mean anything, but the fact remains that Paddington 2 is sitting at 99% on Rotten Tomatoes right now. And when you do go looking for those tomato splats,

they come from outlets with names like Jerry Bloggs About Movies.Biz. Right. I love Jerry. That's great. Jerry blocks about movies. Dot Biz wants to get the internet very angry. Yes, exactly.

And those reviews, I mean, I'm me and I read those reviews and I'm like, lighten up, Francis, right? There is something here that doesn't work for me and it's how they invert the formula. And I understand that they need to invert the formula or they feel they need to instead of Paddington out of place in London. It's the Browns out of place in Peru and that's intentional. And that gets to, it helps them get to questions of what home is and, you know, we'll talk about this, but issues of adoption.

That's kind of what the film's about. But the mistake is in the formula. They baked in a mistake, which is that. And I'm going to go against you here, Rihanna. Paddington is not a fish out of water in London. He is a duck to water in London. He is more British than the Browns are. He is more British than mushy peas at a Sunday roast.

And he's been that way from the jump. When he met the Browns, he was already voiced by Ben Frickin Wischaw, which I love that guy. But can we just agree that that guy, his vibe is very milky tea. Right? And this is why I think Paddington belongs in London. He fits in London like a foot into a Wellington boot. And in the world of London, he's cozy and funny and warm. He feels correctly sized. This is kind of what you were talking about, Stephen. I think this world of the jungle is just too franchisey, too size, too sweeping, too bright. It didn't click for me. It just, I understand why they did it. I just didn't find it interesting. If I can comment a little bit on this notion of being in and out of water, I mean, as somebody who's Asian American and for whom in our community we have a large, a large population of adoptees, right? Transnational, transracial adoptees, which basically is what Paddington is, right? There's always been this, you know, conversation about where you belong. And I do feel like that's part of what I kind of love about Paddington, but especially maybe this movie, because this movie really does begin by asking.

that question. It literally hands him a passport and says, you're British now. You belong here. I mean, yes, Ben Wishaw always belong there, but Pattinson the bear, you know, the brown bear, maybe less so. And there we have this conversation that kind of is a theme of the entire film about whether or not, I mean, he has this conversation with Mr. Gruber about where your allegiances are, whether you have divided identity. And it kind of lands very squarely in this idea that, no, actually, you belong where you belong and you are both your adopted and your native country and guess what, it's not just about the family that loves you, but the entire community that loves you. And in this era especially, that's kind of an amazing thing to be saying.

And it shouldn't be controversial, but it is controversial, you know? So that was something this movie did even more so, I think, than the two prior ones, which also had really interesting things to say about, let's just say it, migration. Jeff, I'm going to have to disagree with you because, my one simple issue that I had with Paddington 3, or Paddington in Peru, more properly, P3 or P-Peru. Two Paddington to Peru. I look at Paddington as if he is a victim of environmental displacement.

Oh. And he is a cultural refugee, I feel like. And despite him aligning more with British values, I feel also that his idea, identity is whitewash. And I'm saying this as a Latino, right? So this is where I'm coming from. But it's like watching this movie, there's a lot of side plots about identity. There's like a whole conquistador kind of narrative in the background of this movie. And the one thing that didn't really sit well while watching it was this idea of like, what are they trying to say about whiteness and culture and cultural assimilation? Because I felt a similar way.

this is going to sound really silly. I was on the pop culture happy hour episode where we watched Minions Rise of Grue, right? A similarly scathing indictment. I loved Minions Rise of Gru, but I came out of that episode with one qualm with Minions Rise of Gru and it's how they portrayed Asian people and how it felt very, I don't know, fetishistic to put the minions doing like Kung Fu and stuff like that. Like it just didn't sit well with my spirit. But while I think Paddington in Peru was less overt with this kind of appropriative wrestling

that it's doing with Peruvian culture, that's the one thing that that left me with a little bit of pause was that like I feel like it wasn't appropriately addressing the fact that like Britain is a colonizer country. Yeah. And this family from London is traveling to Peru. and, you know, Paddington is from London with these Peruvian bears. Like, again, if I think about it too hard, my face will, like, I'll faint, you know, because it's like, nobody should really be thinking about this in regards to Paddington and Peru.

But like... I should not be wrestling with anything watching Paddington and Peru. Exactly. And that's why when I was sitting in the theater thinking about this, I had a thought. And then I was like, you know what? Like, it's fine. I just let it wash over me, like water over a stone. The one issue I think that I'm left with is how the movie treats this like colonizer mentality between the Christian nuns in the mission and the conquistador bad guy.

You know, there's just something there that I can't really quite put my finger on, but it just didn't really sit the most well with me with it being a British production. They not like us. They not like us. Yeah. It's really interesting because this does not engage with Peruvian culture in any serious way, in the same way the books didn't because they were such British products. I guess what I'm really having trouble with is not like the nature of the message or what it's saying about colonization, but the scale. Like in later books, Paddington does go to Peru.

He competes in the Tour de France. But in those first few books, he goes on the London Underground. He goes to see a play. He goes shopping. He tries to make dinner. That's his wheelhouse, I feel. That's his vibe. which is cozy.

And as soon as you graft onto it, this whole search for El Dorado, that never seems to gel. It's like, get your duck tails out of my Paddington. That's what I kept coming back to. They're trying to take this small story and franchise it and make it an ongoing Paddington in space,

Paddington. And that's not where I want this series to go. Add to the fact that they're not really seriously engaging with any kind of cultural exchange or cultural colonization because they're just not willing to. I agree with you, Glenn, that this movie is starting to kind of franchise these characters away from what attracted me to the first few films. And where this film really pulled me back without giving anything away, there's a point in

this film where it imparts a lesson. There is a part in this film in which it gets sentimental. I know, shocker, spoiler. Paddington's Sentimental? That was the stuff that pulled me back in. A lot of the kind of swashbuckling adventure of it got a little bit deadening after a while. Because it wasn't what I come to these movies for. And I would love it if Paddington 4 resets in the house in London.

And it has like gentle tea time adventures with some character actor trying to eat Paddington for some reason. Yeah, it's a recurring theme of eating the bear. Yeah. I don't want these movies to get too sweeping. I don't want them to get too ambitious. I agree with you, Glenn, that that is part of why this film felt a little less satisfying than the first two, even though I will, I have to go back to say, I really enjoyed it. I will probably watch it again when it comes to streaming.

I will recommend it to people. It's just, it falls into that category of sequels where it takes the thing you like and tries to remix it in a way that makes it less of what I like. I think despite, you know, all of us having our qualms with it, though, like, looking at what the kids' movie market is right now, it's still miles better than, you know, I was looking through the showtimes the other day, like the Mufasa Lion King reboot thing, Dogman, like, this is inventive and a movie that very clearly is designed for adults as well as kids to consume. I see a lot of movies and I think it's very hard to come by a film that accesses both those markets and entertains effectively, especially when we're in like the dregs of movie going, you know, these early months of the year where we're kind of just getting tossed whatever.

It's refreshing. You know, it's refreshing to watch something and laugh a lot as somebody who's not the target audience, you know? Yeah, I mean, that's a great point, Rihanna, because like here's the secret. Here's the thing that this film has in its back pocket. Whenever moves it to the front pocket, I'm in, it's Olivia Coleman. We've talked about this. But she is swinging big here. She is effortlessly funny.

And what's fascinating about that is she's doing the thing that actors are trained not to do, which is mugging for the camera, which is pulling the faces. And yet she's Olivia Freak and Coleman. Every time she pulled the face a laugh. Every single time. Every time. When she does that goony-eyed, almost but not quite fourth wall breaking, kind of like, I'm not suspicious here. I totally broke. I found even the absence of jokes.

It's like sometimes she would look at the screen and it would be like it was a joke and the audience would laugh. And it was entirely like the movie derives all this humor from the fact that like, I think Olivia Coleman may not be on the up and up here. Lampshade. The movie knows it's obvious.

The movie knows you know it's obvious. You know the movie knows you know it's obvious. And the movie plays around with, that. I did find that extraordinarily witty. I just, I love her. I love, you know, just throw her on the screen and I'm happy. And Antonio Banderas also goes big. I think, you know, where she's effortlessly funny, he's effortfully funny. You can see him trying to do what Hugh Grant did in the previous film. He's reaching for it. And he finds it occasionally. So good for him. You can definitely see the gears grind. And I will say that, you know, there's something to be said for people like

Olivia Coleman who are most known maybe for, if you will, serious theater, right? Kind of stepping outside that and just going full caricature, I think Antonio Banderas constantly swings back and forth between, you know, SpyKidsie type level stuff and stuff which is a lot more... Puss and boots. Oh, he's so good in Pous and Boots and Boots. So good in Puss and Boots. But absolutely, there's something delightful about seeing performers very capable of adult dramatic performance just being their inner kid. And that's what this, both of them feel like. Well, we all kind of landed more or less in the same place. We dug this

film to various degrees. We want to know what you think about Paddington in Peru. Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH and on Letterboxed at letterbox.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show, Stephen Thompson, Rianna Cruz, Jeff Yang. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Happy to be here. Thank you. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episode sponsor free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.npr.org. Happy Hour or visit the link in our show notes.

This episode was produced by Hufsafatma and Lenin Sherburn and edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katzif and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon and we'll see you all next time.