The Series' Second Movie Beat em Citizen Kane /em on Rotten Tomatoes. The New One Is a Whole Different Animal.

The past decade has brought the world a lot of political and economic chaos, but in its defense, that same span of time has also given us the Paddington Bear movies. With those two London-set adventures, a mix of animation (Paddington) and live action (everyone else), director Paul King created a loopy world all his own, as cozy and visually pleasing as a dollhouse. The Paddington films were also refreshingly gentle, with moral messages that emerged not from preachy dialogue but from their ursine protagonist's unassuming goodness. And Ben Whishaw's voice performance as the unfailingly polite, naively bumbling bear is one of the all-time great matches between actor and animated character, up there with Tom Hanks' Woody in the Toy Story films: Whishaw quite simply is Paddington, and the completeness and believability of his characterization would have set the films apart even without their droll scripts and all-in supporting casts. The third film in the series, Paddington in Peru, ran a high risk of becoming a shark-jumping sequel, with King and his co-writers now replaced by first-time feature director Dougal Wilson and a new writing team consisting of Mark Burton, Jon Foster, and James Lamont.