Paddington

Paul King’s film follows a talking bear who comes from Peru to London and is taken in by the Brown family who find him at Paddington Station; the threat is a taxidermist who wants him stuffed and put in a museum. The bear’s voice changed after shooting ended. Colin Firth recorded the part first and stepped away in June 2014; producer David Heyman said the voice was too mature and they wanted something more open and younger. Ben Whishaw took over. King said of him that he breathes and speaks and sounds like Paddington rather than the most beautiful chocolate voiced man on the planet. Framestore’s animation supervisor Pablo Grillo says Paddington was keyframed by hand rather than motion captured, and the physical comedian Javier Marzan was kept on set so the actors had someone to play against. The BBFC’s first advisory listed dangerous behaviour and mild sex references; after the distributor objected the board rewrote it, changed the sex references to innuendo and specified one mumbled word of bad language. Michael Bond, who wrote the books, has a brief role. A good fit if you are fine with a family film taking the threat of a stuffed bear in a glass case seriously. Not for anyone watching with children old enough to copy the scene that floods the bathroom.