“Paddington 2 is the best film ever made”, a user who was posted on X in 2022.
This tweet was not ironic.
In the seven years since the release in January 2018, the film about the search of a Marmelade-loving Bear is to find the perfect gift for his beloved Auntie an internet phenomenon, memes, and approval of Nicolas Cage. For a while it was the best rated film ever on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
“A very eclectic group of people responds in the way they do,” said David Heyman, a producer of “Paddington 2” and the predecessor of 2015, “Paddington”, in a recent telephone conversation from his house in London. For example, the Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro confessed to Heyman that he was a fan.
Now with the third episode of the Function Length in the franchise, 'Paddington in Peru', in theater and all the milestone of $ 100 million in the international cash register has passed it hard to imagine that then 'Paddington 2' Stateside arrived for the first time in theaters, it was just a modest success of the cash register. Since the releases of DVD and streaming, there has been a dedicated community of online fans around it, evangelizing about the outsider bear that brought joy into their lives.
“There is humor in it for adults; There is humor for children, “said Heyman, who grew up with reading the Paddington books, written by the British author Michael Bond. “It never feels patient or like it is talking to his audience. It has a large, beating heart. '
All three films are based on the children's books about the Duffle-Coated, Hard-Staringbeer, first published in 1958. In the first film Paddington emigrates from Peru to London in a story inspired by the rescue operation from the Second World War that almost brought it He almost brought 10,000 children from the Nazi-living Europe to England. The second film, directed by Paul King, who wrote the script with Simon Farnaby, is an action adventure with amazing set -sequencies, after Paddington through a lawsuit, an escape in prison and a bold pursuit by train.
Saving the return of the cast members of the original film-de Soft WHISHAW voted as Paddington, Hugh Bonneville as the unfortunate but well-meaning Mr. Brown and Sally Hawkins as the candid Mrs. Brown-Was easy, Heyman said. And bringing in a dream team of Nieuwe – Hugh Grant as the ridiculous Campy Schurk, Phoenix Buchanan – was also a breeze.
“Hugh knows a good role,” he said laughing.
King's trust as a director grew from the first film to the second, Heyman said, as he felt more at ease with the crowd of visual effects needed to create the CGI bear, which was represented while filming by a toy bear head on A stick.
“There was much more time to concentrate on the script and on working with the actors,” Heyman said. “It was really fun. The spirit of the film was reflected on the set. “
That was perhaps the most clearest in the Rollicking-Busby Berkeley-style dance number that loosens in prison while the end loans are starting to roll. 10 years locked up for his schedule to frame Paddington for stealing a pop-up book, Phoenix, a former actor, finally gets his star. He leads the roughly 300 other prisoners in a tap number set to “Rain on the roof” by Stephen Sondheim's musical “Follies”.
“Hugh was completely in it,” said the choreographer Craig Revel Horwood, who created the 90-second song, which was shot down the day before the set was shot in sections. He recruited 300 of his tattooed, headwear set professional dancer Friends to come up with the corps.
“Everyone who looked rough, we were lit,” said Horwood, who spent about a month planning the song, including three weeks of teaching Tapdans. “I had no problem getting someone before the performance. Nobody rejected me. “
He aimed the filthy looking extras with Pastel Parasols and size XXL Bedazed Pink Striped Uniforms-“When I saw everyone in Costume, I was laughing myself,” he said- Then shot from Sunup to Sundown, pinching in the last few takes when a Deadline was approaching a midnight.
“It's a kind of mum -rose in” Gypsy “moment,” he said. “Everything comes on roses,” that kind of number. “
The same could not be said for the first coupons of the film US Box Office. Although “Paddington 2” had been a great success in Britain, it had difficulty separating the peloton during a Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Weekend, according to a budget of $ 40 million, according to the Box Office Mojo of $ 40 million.
A challenge, Heyman explained, was that the Weinstein Company, who initially had partial North American distribution rights for the film, was exacerbated in a tax crisis by the many accusations of sexual attacks against Harvey Weinstein, its co-founder and former co- Chairman and former co-chairman and former co-chairman and. At the point of submitting bankruptcy, the company has the rights to Warner Bros. Sold no less than two months before the release date of the film.
“So Warners had one hand behind their backs bound in terms of marketing,” Heyman said.
In the end, strong reviews, including from this newspaper, and word of mouth, helped the film in the United States, but it never achieved the success it had in Great Britain, where it was the sixth high-brutal film of 2017, according to Box Office Mojo.
That is, until “Paddington 2” became available to view Amazon Prime video in March 2018 and then became a streaming hit in 2020 during the Coronavirus Pandemie.
“The film shows what can be if people have more empathy towards each other,” says Jason Chou, 28, an artist for visual effects in Los-Angeles.
But not everyone saw a generous spirit in the version of King and Farnaby of the Classic Bear.
A strange footnote for the reputation of “Paddington 2” appeared in a blog a few years after the film was released. The film had a solid perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. Suddenly, in 2021, it fell to 99 percent after a freelance film critic wrote on his blog that he had given a negative review about BBC Radio in 2017 (nobody was able to find that review).
The blogger, Eddie Harrison, wrote that he grew up with reading the Bond books, and that in “Paddington 2” the “charm of the bear is completely missing”, and he has “malignant, bead eyes and ratty fur.”
“This is not my Paddington -Bear,” he added, “but a sinister, malignant cheaper to be shot in space, or fucked by Space at the first occasion. “
Within twelve hours after his blog post in May 2021, he became public enemy no. 1 for the Paddington Hive. And hours after the score fell, the Hollywood Reporter published an article about the downgrade, with dozens of news stores that followed.
Why did Harrison take the trouble?
“I acknowledged that a revised criticism would hit Paddington of a perfect RT score,” Harrison wrote on his blog, The Film Authority, in a report of the Fallout. But he did not, he noticed, anticipated the intensity of the Vitriol, that, he said, did, doxxing and vandalism, as well as death threats.
“It's just an opinion, man,” said Harrison, who called “Paddington in Peru” “passable but rather just”.
Heyman certainly maintains a different view of “Paddington 2”, which is shared on the internet, even if the third film, which follows the bear back to Peru, has collected lukewarm reviews.
“The second is about looking for good people,” Heyman said, “because if people find it, they can find it in themselves.
“In a time of life with cynicism, Paddington is a remarkably generous, nonsense,” he added. “And the film reflects that.”
