Critic Reviews

Marmaladen with gloriously silly jokes, pitch-perfect performances and incidental detail, this is a warm, witty and wondrously inventive great big bear-hug of a movie.

Paddington is totally delightful.

Paddington is fast-paced yet unhurried, serving up surprisingly subtle ideas on melting-pot urban diversity—Paddington is a stranger in a strange land, after all—and rich visual tableaux, including a gorgeous recurring shot of the Brown home as a living dollhouse.

There are plenty of laughs — and nothing that goes over a kid’s head to an adult funny bone is smutty or smarmy — and the sentiment never feels strained or artificial.

This comic chronicle of a Peruvian bear’s adventures in London turns out to be a total charmer, made with panache, élan and generous dollops of marmalade.

Artfully and cleverly, the sweet spirit of that young bear from darkest Peru and his many London misadventures materializes brilliantly on screen in the very good hands of writer-director-conjurer Paul King.

Paddington is a wonder: warm, gentle, well-acted, funny without being stupid.

There are so many terrific things going on in the film – rapid-fire wordplay, split-second visual gags, and some veddy, veddy British punning – that, frankly, Paddington deserves more than one viewing. Huzzah Paddington, and marmalade forever!

The filmmakers behind Paddington successfully bring the lovable bear into the future and strike a balance between honoring the spirit of the original books and updating the story for today’s young audiences. This is a charming film whose underlying message of tolerance and acceptance strikes a palpable chord in today’s world — both for children and adults.

This is not only a dandy, playful movie about a talking bear, but one that gives pause for thought, too.