#HUGH GRANT PADDINGTON 2 MOVIE#
#HUGH GRANT PADDINGTON 2 TV#

Meanwhile, the Brown family are tootling amiably along as ever. (These olden-days touches will do no harm to Paddington 2вЂ™s chances in foreign markets.) In fact the film has lots of quaint English things, like St PaulвЂ™s Cathedral, steam trains, and even вЂ“ astonishingly вЂ“ more than one fully functioning red public payphone, which characters use instead of mobiles. The ironically named Phoenix has just moved into this elegant west London neighbourhood, which is more or less as it was when Hugh Grant was here for Richard CurtisвЂ™s Notting Hill in 1999: picturesque, and evidently not yet the preserve of the super-rich.

#HUGH GRANT PADDINGTON 2 TV#

He is an ageing, cravat-wearing actor named Phoenix Buchanan with a moderate career behind him, brooding about one day getting a one-man thesp spectacular in LondonвЂ™s West End but now reduced to doing Clement Freud-style dog food TV ads. It may be bad form to begin with any character other than the young ursine hero himself, but Hugh Grant completely pinches this, with an outrageously scene-stealing turn as the appalling villain. The uproarious finale meanwhile has something of Mel Brooks.

#HUGH GRANT PADDINGTON 2 MOVIE#

The day-glo primary coloured design gives the movie a storybook feel, at some places a little like Wes Anderson. And although one could say its work on diversity is not complete, the film has a fair bit of material вЂ“ now more pertinent than ever вЂ“ about the way a confident, happy nation welcomes immigrants. ThereвЂ™s a sight-gag involving the spurious breaking of a valuable vase that I particularly enjoyed.

The film is pitched with insouciant ease and a lightness of touch at both children and adults without any self-conscious shifts in irony or tone: itвЂ™s humour with the citrus tang of top-quality thick-cut marmalade. Their screenplay perfectly catches the tone of the great master himself, Michael Bond, author of the original books, who sadly died in June this year at the age of 91, creative and productive to the end. This is the follow-up to the first Paddington movie of 2014 and itвЂ™s a tremendously sweet-natured, charming, unassuming and above all funny film with a story that just rattles along, powered by a nonstop succession of Grade-A gags conjured up by screenwriters Paul King (who also directs), Simon Farnaby and Jon Croker. This yearвЂ™s Christmas treat has arrived early, and Paddington Bear has incidentally shown us that Blade Runner isnвЂ™t the only film around capable of giving us an exciting and impressive sequel.

Hugh grant paddington 2