I missed the Paddington train the first time around. I'd read the books as a child, but there was something about how quaint and British the movies seemed that made me dismiss them out of hand. I'm of the opinion that you can never be too old for a movie, and by the time you're reading this I will have already seen Pixar's new Turning Red, but for whatever reason, Paddington slipped the net. It's only because I'm going to see Paddington 2 writer Simon Farnaby's latest film, The Phantom of the Open, next week that I bothered to check it out at all. What I found in Paddington 2 was one of the staunchest anti-cop movies I have come across in some time.
Most children's movies are made with some consideration for the parents or guardians in mind - an understanding that when kids go to see these flicks in the cinema, they are dragging along dear old grandpa for the ride. For that reason, they often have jokes and references that will go over the children's heads, as well as bringing storylines and themes that resonate with us all. It's why you can never really outgrow a film, only see it in a new light. Of course, when you write about movies a lot, you often feel the need to over-intellectualise things. To explain that the reason you love hyper violent movies is not because you just love blood and guts and excitement, but because Gangster #3 having his intestines pulled out is a metaphor for the trials and tribulations of the tax system. Sometimes it's just okay to say you like stuff because it's cool. And it's okay to just like children's movies because they're nice. But there is more to it with Paddington 2.
The first Paddington movie is just nice. Sure, there are themes about family and togetherness and acceptance, but these are all pretty general family film ideas. The second movie begins in a similar fashion, with a series of set-pieces like Paddington working in a barber's shop or trying to wash windows. However, it all takes a dark turn when Paddington is arrested. Wrongfully convicted for stealing an antique book, Paddington is in the docks and we are explicitly told that he’ll fine so long as he has a fair judge. Only the judge was involved in an incident at the barber's shop, so Paddington gets ten years. It's silly, but it makes a salient point: sometimes you are sent to jail because the system, or the people working within it, do not like you. In Paddington's case, it's a very whimsical dislike because of a marmalade incident at a barber's shop. In real life, it's because of your skin colour, because of your religion, or because you're poor.
The movie doubles down on this point. Mr. Curry, a minor villain, is a self-appointed community watch leader who acts as the street's police force. He takes an instant dislike to Paddington and distrusts him intensely. This time, there is no light-hearted misunderstanding at the heart of Mr. Curry's ill will. He just doesn't like Paddington, specifically because he is a bear. He is different. He is foreign. He will disrupt the neighbourhood and lead to more bears until people like Mr. Curry are a minority. Mr. Curry wants Paddington to go back where he came from. How the movie positions Paddington as an immigrant, and how that shapes his interactions with representations of the law, is very blunt and direct.
Then there's the prison itself. Initially, the prisoners are pretty stock thugs. Tom Davis plays a huge, hulking menace who threatens to bury Paddington in the yard, and Brendon Gleeson plays the burly chef Knuckles (spelt on his own knuckles as Nuckel's) who serves endless plates of thin, gritty gruel. When Paddington suggests something different, Knuckles also resorts to brutish threats, until a taste of Paddington's marmalade sandwich converts him. Cue cute cooking montage, and suddenly all the prisoners are served marmalade sandwiches. It's somewhat trite, that Knuckles only acts so mean because he's afraid of what people might think of him, that a whole cell block of prisoners can be redeemed by a single act of kindness, but it is saying something broader. Our justice system is cruel, and seeks to punish rather than rehabilitate. With less contempt for those inside of it, the justice system could be far more successful.
This is not just seeing a gangster’s intestines and convincing myself it's a statement on tax law. When the warden is reading a bedtime story - something introduced to the prison seemingly on Paddington's advice - we do not hear the whole thing, but a single line: "it turns out the monster wasn't such a monster at all." It's very clearly a statement on how the UK sees foreigners and criminals, and has only gotten more relevant in the five years since Paddington 2 was released.
We see this kindness reciprocated too. When the prisoners break out, they have gotten away scot-free - until they discover Paddington is in danger. Then, at the sacrifice of their personal freedoms, they return to help their friend. It's not just that Paddington needs to give us a happy ending, that it turns out the criminals were nice guys all along. It's not as naive as you might think. In neither film is the villain redeemed - it's not a movie afraid to see the bad in people, even as Paddington himself always looks for the good.
Paddington 2 doesn't quite say ACAB - Paddington looks for hope, and it believes there are good cops out there. But it is acutely aware that the system itself is broken, and that it takes more than the love of one good bear to fix it. It's strange that, for a kids movie that seems to have broken into the zeitgeist, no one seems to have been talking about these extremely pertinent themes. Paddington 2 could be the most relevant British movie of the Brexit era. Perhaps I just missed it - I did miss the Paddington wave, after all.