‘Everything you want is there but it doesn’t reach the lofty standards of Paddington 2’

The third instalment in the Paddington franchise is “a wholesome, richly coloured adventure yarn” however it can’t quite replicate the “blissful magic” of its predecessor.

How do you follow the best film ever made? Well, perhaps that’s over-stating the case, but there was a flurry of articles in 2021 claiming that Paddington 2 (2017) had more positive reviews than Citizen Kane, the Orson Welles masterpiece that is always hailed as one of cinema’s high points. How could the third entry in the Paddington series live up to that?

To make the task even more demanding, Paddington in Peru doesn’t have the same director as the first two Paddington films, Paul King, nor is it co-written by him and Simon Farnaby – although King and Farnaby do share a “screen story by” credit. Sally Hawkins has left the franchise, too, leaving Emily Mortimer to step into the shoes of Mrs Brown, the matriarch of Paddington’s adoptive family. The good news is that Mortimer and the new director, Dougal Wilson, are both creditable substitutes. On the other hand, it’s clear that they were both hired to imitate someone else, rather than to provide any distinctive qualities of their own. And in general there’s a sense that Paddington in Peru is a substitute: it’s trying its hardest to replicate the blissful magic that Paddington 2 seemed to conjure up so effortlessly.

Still, the new film does move on from the previous one in some shrewd ways. The most obvious departure is that, as the title suggests, Paddington in Peru doesn’t stay in London for long. Mr Curry (Peter Capaldi) is nowhere to be seen, Mr Gruber (Jim Broadbent) gets just one brief scene, and the Browns’ neighbours in Windsor Gardens are glimpsed at the start and then forgotten. It makes sense, too, that the Brown family’s destination should be the country where the marmalade-loving bear was born, so the rainy streets of England are soon swapped for the sun-dappled, jungle-clad mountains and valleys of the Amazon. It’s a clever way of taking the series somewhere new while sticking to its established lore.

What happens is that Paddington (voiced as usual with gentle, quizzical sincerity by Ben Whishaw) receives a letter from a nun who runs the Home for Retired Bears where his Aunt Lucy is passing her twilight years (or twilight “bear years”, to use the film’s favoured measurement). The nun, known as the Reverend Mother, is a hearty, acoustic guitar-strumming character played with joyous verve by Olivia Colman – and the role fits her so perfectly that I found myself asking why she hadn’t played a hearty, acoustic guitar-strumming nun before. Still, her costume does raise the question of whether she is as hilarious as Hugh Grant was when he was disguised as a nun in Paddington 2. And I think we all know the answer to that one.

Anyway, the Reverend Mother informs Paddington that his Aunt Lucy has been acting strangely because she misses him so much. Meanwhile, Mrs Brown, Mr Brown (Hugh Bonneville), Judy (Madeleine Harris) and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) are growing apart, so a trip to South America strikes them as the perfect opportunity to share some quality time before Judy heads off to university. One sprightly montage later, Paddington, the Browns and their doughty Scottish housekeeper, Mrs Bird (Julie Walters), have taken a plane across the Atlantic and a bus through the jungle, only to learn that Lucy has disappeared from the bears’ home. They’ll have to set off down the Amazon on her trail, and that means hiring a riverboat captained by a handsome explorer (Antonio Banderas) and his daughter (Carla Tous).

Is there anything suspicious about the ancestral portrait of a gold-hungry conquistador that the explorer has hanging on his wood-panelled cabin wall? And is there anything suspicious about the way the Reverend Mother keeps insisting that the Home for Retired Bears isn’t suspicious at all? One of the most enjoyable things about Paddington in Peru is that it doesn’t try to keep the villains’ shenanigans a secret. The joke is that while the Browns may not realise what the explorer and the nun are up to, it’s patently obvious to the rest of us.

Confronted by waterfalls and piranhas, double crosses and Inca riddles, the Browns’ jungle quest is the subject of a wholesome, well-constructed, richly coloured adventure yarn with just enough of the eccentric charm, animated interludes and musical numbers that make the Paddington series what it is. Banderas is terrific as a conflicted baddy, and the resolution is a satisfying and wily one. Paddington in Peru, then, is better than 90% of children’s films. But it’s impossible to avoid the obvious comparison – and the fact is that it doesn’t reach the lofty standards of Paddington 2.

Everything you want is there, it’s just not as good as it was in 2017. The mystery plot is more contrived, with too many convoluted back stories, and the action is more cartoonishly silly, with very little genuine jeopardy. The jokes and farcical set pieces keep you smiling, but they don’t prompt more than two or three actual laughs. The film isn’t quite as resonant, either. The screenplay touches on what Mr Gruber calls the “mixed feelings” of being an immigrant and the importance of spending time with your family, but neither theme is treated with the same heartfelt enthusiasm as Paddington 2’s bravely unironic celebration of decency and inclusivity. And it’s not likely that Aunt Lucy’s latest rhyming motto, “When skies are grey / hope is the way,” will catch on to the extent of her last one: “When we’re kind and polite / The world will be right.”

Maybe Paddington 2 has spoiled us. In contrast, Paddington in Peru offers a fun and lively hour-and-three-quarters in the cinema, and that’s not to be sniffed at, but it comes across as the solid third part of an established franchise rather than a stellar pop-cultural phenomenon in its own right. And the announcement that a further sequel and a television series have been greenlit isn’t all that exciting. However sweet and delicious they might have been, some film series, like marmalade sandwiches, should be polished off before they go stale.

Paddington in Peru is released on 8 November in the UK and 17 Jan in the US.