If the movie version of “Paddington” were a nice chocolate (and it kind of is), it would be Maximum English Cocoa Overload. How English is this movie? As English as a cold, rainy day at the beach. As English as the politeness that masks hostility, as English as a pie that contains meat, as English as secretly wishing you lived in some other country.
All this makes this live-action film with a digital bear just about perfect, at least as a collection of sketches without any particular direction. The genial goofiness begins in a prologue spoofing those right-jolly-good traditions of English exploring, in this case in Darkest Peru, where a young adventure seeker leaves a small colony of bears with English-language-instruction records and a craving for marmalade.
One young bear curious about the world (humbly voiced by Jim Whishaw) behind all of this stows away on a ship. “Mind your manners!” his aunt tells him — he also learns that the English have 107 different ways to say, “It’s raining.” Before long, he and his unpronounceable name turn up with the mail at a London train station, where a curmudgeon (a highly entertaining Hugh Bonneville), his wife (Sally Hawkins) and two children agree to take him on as a temporary border and not at all a new member of the family. Oh, and as for what to call him, one supposes the name of the train station will do.
In a sense, this is an origin story for a mythic character, and when Paddington finally slips on his blue duffel coat, it’s an inspired moment, like when Bruce Wayne asks of his new car, “Does it come in black?” The screenwriters surround him with endless riffs on Anglo eccentricity, such as the grandma (Julie Walters) with the lovingly maintained collection of Hoovers, the mom who devises treacly nicknames (“Sweetiepops”) and the teen girl, suffering from a case of nearly terminal embarrassment, who nevertheless masters the art of speaking fluent Bear.
Paddington gets into some elaborate, Curious George-like high jinks that aren’t really in the gentle, sly spirit of the books (but give the film toddler appeal and cute trailer moments) and faces off with a new villain: Nicole Kidman as the woman who kidnaps P. and hustles him away in a van marked “TAXI.” At least that’s how it appears when the sliding door conceals the rest of the word: “DERMIST.” Yes, she wants Paddington for his pelt, not his marmalade sandwiches.
Such is the incessant drollery that even the evil taxidermist’s nutty attempts to bag Paddington at the end seem intended to be more comical than perilous, but opinions of 6-year-olds may differ. Anyway, a would-be scary film about the English isn’t trying very hard if it contains no mention whatsoever of dentistry.