Film

Drama is easy; comedy is hard. The self-evident truth of this maxim is consistently ignored by awards committees, who continue to reward the makers of gritty, gloomy films about nothing over any film that dares to make you laugh. Will Paddington 2 be nominated for anything, anything at all, next spring? My guess is not, but you’ll do well to see a more thoroughly satisfying film this year. For it turns out that Paddington, despite being excellent, was a mere preparation for the glory of its sequel. Once again voiced by Ben Whishaw with wide-eyed innocence, Michael Bond’s ursine hero has been animated by several hundred compositors, artists and odd bods around the world, their vast expertise combining with such felicity that, when Paddington sheds a tear, we believe that a real bear is shedding a real tear, and we shed a small, manly tear ourselves. But the essence of...

I’m afraid this isn’t one of our four free articles available in full, which are set out in the first two rows of the ‘Magazine’ page.
Please click here to find them.

To buy a digital version of this issue for just £2.99, click here