Gor­don & Pad­dy – first look review

Although the ani­ma­tion film on everyone’s lips at Berli­nale is undoubt­ed­ly Isle of Dogs, for those who like their plucky heroes a lit­tle more amphib­ian, a charm­ing Swedish crime caper by the name of Gor­don & Pad­dy is here to sat­is­fy that niche.

Based on a series of beloved children’s’ books not well-known out­side of their native coun­try, the film focus­es on an elder­ly toad named Gor­don – the chief of police in a small for­est enclave, pop­u­lat­ed by a small group of rab­bits, black­birds and squir­rels. Amid the cold of a Scan­di win­ter, a nefar­i­ous crim­i­nal is steal­ing the prized nuts belonged to the village’s neu­rot­ic pre-school teacher, Valde­mar. It’s up to Gor­don (who is, by his own admis­sion, ​“get­ting too old for this”) to crack the case.

It’s a famil­iar but charm­ing premise, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sid­er­ing Gor­don is voiced by Swedish film leg­end Stel­lan Skars­gård, who huffs and puffs through his gruff dia­logue, but brings an unde­ni­able sense of warmth to the tired old toad. Of course, every great detec­tive needs an assis­tant, and Gordon’s comes in the form of Pad­dy, a des­ti­tute but promis­ing young mouse who Gor­don comes upon while attempt­ing to track the thief.

There’s more to the sto­ry than nut-based hijinks though. The ani­ma­tion style is rem­i­nis­cent of a pop-up book, where char­ac­ters come to life against sta­t­ic back­grounds. Sim­plis­tic but charm­ing­ly ren­dered, it takes cues from the likes of Wind and the Wil­lows and Beat­rix Pot­ter, but has an unde­ni­able Scan­di sen­si­bil­i­ty, from the snow­drifts to the musi­cal cues, wink­ing know­ing­ly at the pop­u­lar Nordic crime dra­ma trend (see also: dif­fi­cult eye­wit­ness­es and a mis­un­der­stood villain).

Of course, there’s no escap­ing the fact that Gor­don & Pad­dy is pri­mar­i­ly aimed at chil­dren, and has a suit­ably twee mes­sage at its core about kind­ness and accep­tance – but it’s charm­ing enough to be enjoyed by those well beyond its tar­get audi­ence, with a pleas­ing­ly suc­cinct run-time. In a world of bright­ly-col­ored CGI films, it’s a rare treat to unearth such an earnest lit­tle film and to escape for just over an hour into a world where the biggest prob­lem is a squirrel’s unhealthy fix­a­tion on his beloved hazelnuts.