Padding­ton

At a time when pub­lic­i­ty mate­ri­als are scru­ti­nised almost as exten­sive­ly as the prod­uct they’re sell­ing, typ­i­cal­ly from any­where up to a year pri­or to a film com­ing out, it’s vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to avoid form­ing a pre­con­ceived opin­ion about a forth­com­ing release.

In the case of Padding­ton, the ear­ly signs weren’t exact­ly promis­ing. While the first poster didn’t exact­ly give much away, a lat­er effort fea­tur­ing some rather flat ani­ma­tion was deemed ​“creepy” by some fans. It was the kind of meme-spawn­ing response the film’s pro­duc­ers must have dread­ed. Then came the news that Col­in Firth had left the pro­duc­tion by mutu­al con­sent after decid­ing that his voice wasn’t right for the cen­tral char­ac­ter, as reflect­ed in an eeri­ly dia­logue-free teas­er trailer.

Audi­ences could be for­giv­en for fear­ing the worst, espe­cial­ly with sub-par fam­i­ly come­dies fea­tur­ing crude­ly anthro­po­mor­phised com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed pro­tag­o­nists like The Smurfs and Garfield still painful­ly fresh in the mem­o­ry. But all of that counts for did­dly squat now because Padding­ton is noth­ing short of a Christ­mas miracle.

Direc­tor Paul King’s adap­ta­tion of Michael Bond’s beloved children’s books is the per­fect ton­ic for all those tin­sel-trimmed turkeys that have been honk­ing up the fes­tive sched­ule in recent years. The film opens with an inge­nious British Pathé-style archive doc­u­men­tary that air­drops us into deep­est dark­est Peru in the com­pa­ny of handlebar-’tached explor­er Mont­gomery Clyde (Tim Down­ie), whose lost expe­di­tion suc­cinct­ly estab­lish­es a young bear’s motives for stow­ing away on a car­go ship bound for present-day Lon­don with lit­tle more than a lit­er­al hat­ful of mar­malade sand­wich­es for sustenance.

In keep­ing with Bond’s orig­i­nal sto­ry, Padding­ton (Ben Whishaw) is dis­cov­ered by the Brown fam­i­ly – mum Mary (Sal­ly Hawkins), dad Hen­ry (Hugh Bon­neville) and kids Jonathan and Judy (Samuel Joslin and Madeleine Har­ris) – on the epony­mous train sta­tion plat­form, where he’s quick­ly come to realise that Lon­don isn’t every­thing he thought it would be (although it does seem to rain a lot). At first the Browns are divid­ed about whether to take this pecu­liar stranger in for the night, but the mat­ter-of-fact­ness about which they accept him encour­ages us to do the same. What’s this, a CG talk­ing bear in a flop­py red hat clutch­ing a tat­tered old suit­case? Won­der­ful. How do you take your tea?

If the set up is com­fort­ably famil­iar, the film’s mes­sage is sur­pris­ing­ly pro­gres­sive. Padding­ton is an alien from an exot­ic land, with no means of track­ing down the explor­er who once invit­ed Aunt Lucy (Imel­da Staunton) and Uncle Pas­tu­zo (Michael Gam­bon) to vis­it him one day. Yet the Browns treat Padding­ton with nei­ther sus­pi­cion nor pity, instead wel­com­ing him into their home and going out of their way to help him as a ges­ture of good will.

Grant­ed he is a sweet-natured and rather affa­ble lit­tle crea­ture, but he’s also — as pru­dent risk asses­sor Hen­ry points out – a wild ani­mal who might inad­ver­tent­ly put the chil­dren in dan­ger (cf Griz­zly Man). The fact that the Browns are able to see past this and pro­ceed to clothe, feed and shel­ter him as one of their own is the kind of enlight­ened affir­ma­tive action that would make a UKIP politi­cian spill his pint.

If you’re prone to believ­ing every­thing you read in the right-wing media, we are liv­ing in an age of polit­i­cal-cor­rect­ness-gone-mad, where the very con­cept of Christ­mas is under threat from reli­gious extrem­ists attempt­ing to hijack the hol­i­day for their own sense­less cul­ture war. It’s pop­py­cock, of course, but it is fair to say that film com­pa­nies are under pres­sure to appeal to as broad a social spec­trum as pos­si­ble. Which is a good thing, even if it does occa­sion­al­ly result in trans­par­ent tokenism. Yet King is more con­cerned with remain­ing faith­ful to the source mate­r­i­al than pan­der­ing to every con­ceiv­able tar­get demo­graph­ic, and in short this is a big part of what makes his film is so successful.

The Browns are a white mid­dle-class fam­i­ly who live in a mag­nif­i­cent Vic­to­ri­an town­house on a fic­tion­al street in west Lon­don called ​‘Wind­sor Gar­dens’. Not every­one is going to relate to them, at least not direct­ly. But that’s fine, because the sim­plic­i­ty and sin­cer­i­ty with which King han­dles var­i­ous uni­ver­sal themes makes Padding­ton instant­ly engag­ing on a deep­er emo­tion­al level.

It also helps that the film is absolute­ly crammed with hilar­i­ous one-lin­ers, end­less­ly inven­tive visu­al gags and quirky sup­port­ing char­ac­ters – from Jim Broadbent’s eccen­tric antiques deal­er, Mr Gru­ber, to Nicole Kidman’s taxi­dermy prac­tic­ing bad­die, Mil­li­cent. Indeed, although King has tem­pered his com­bustible brand of black com­e­dy into some­thing more sta­ble and whole­some (although there are still plen­ty of hid­den treats for fans of The Mighty Boosh), Padding­ton stands out because it nev­er once feels safe or over­ly sanitised.

Fam­i­ly movies released around this time of year aren’t sup­posed to be this good. They’re sup­posed to be mass-mar­ket stock­ing-fillers, per­haps an entrée to a Hob­bit or a Night at the Muse­um. In these post-Pot­ter times, audi­ences are increas­ing­ly hav­ing to make do with cyn­i­cal­ly repack­aged fairy tales like Jack the Giant Slay­er or sea­son­al fod­der like Nativ­i­ty 3: Dude, Where’s My Don­key? and Get San­ta. Yet here is an old-fash­ioned, unapolo­get­i­cal­ly sen­ti­men­tal update of a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly British sto­ry that man­ages to seem by turns tra­di­tion­al and timely.

There’s a scene mid­way through the film where the Browns gath­er around an old 16mm pro­jec­tor in Mr Gruber’s shop and Padding­ton, entranced by the warm glow ema­nat­ing from it, steps for­ward and walks straight through the screen into a world far removed from the drab, driz­zly place he has come to call home. For a brief moment we are trans­port­ed to a land filled with majesty and won­der, and by the time the gen­tle whirring sound of the pro­jec­tor ris­es above the busy chat­ter of the Peru­vian jun­gle, return­ing us to that dusty shop on the Por­to­bel­lo Road, it’s clear we’ve just expe­ri­enced a piece of pure cin­e­mat­ic magic.