In this follow-up to the 2014 film, Paddington (voiced by a delightfully unasuming Ben Whitshaw) is a bear with a simple mission - to buy a pop-up book of London for his Aunt Lucy's hundredth birthday. But between the misadventures he encounters raising money to buy the book, and the even worse consequences when a sinister actor (Hugh Grant) steals the book as part of a diabolical plan to recover a mysterious fortune, events seldom run particularly smoothly.
This is a delightfully whimsical film, and very heftily British, with Grant's villain running the gamut of British monuments and the rest of the cast seemingly raided from a roladex of great British character actors. Director Paul King has a nicely stylized approach which means nothing ever becomes too cutesy for words - even while Paddington manages to get through his adventures either through being very polite to people, or, in the most extreme situations, offering a Marmalade sandwich, we consistently get to enjoy the simple pleasure of a children's story well told. Grant has a ball as the pompous ham of a villain, and all in all this is as delightful a children's film as you're likely to see.
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