‘Paddington in Peru’ Review: This Bear Could Save Us All

In this tumultuous and troubling 2025, Paddington—the cheery and polite British bear in the red bucket hat and blue duffle coat—is the hero we need.

In Paddington in Peru, he continues to be a wonderfully amusing and charming beacon of light. “When skies are gray, hope is the way,” Paddington’s Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) always cautions, and director Dougal Wilson’s threequel, which hits theaters Feb. 14, is a buoyant and moving adventure through the pawed protagonists’ native jungle, which he and the Brown family visit in search of Lucy. With wit, wonder, warmth, and a few wink-wink nods to the Indiana Jones movies, it’s further evidence of this franchise’s cute and cuddly preeminence.

Home is where the heart is for Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw), although life in London has grown more complicated.

Teen Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) hangs out in his room playing video games, designing gizmos, and “chilling;” his sister Judy (Madeleine Harris) is prepping for college; and their mom Mary (Emily Mortimer, ably replacing Sally Hawkins) is wistful for the days when the entire clan could sit on the couch together—a notion beautifully visualized by a two-dimensional animated sequence that echoes her paintings.

Paterfamilias Henry (Hugh Bonneville), meanwhile, is coping with a new insurance company boss (Hayley Atwell) who wants him to ignore his Nervous Nellie instincts and “embrace the risk.” All in all, things are on the cusp of permanently changing, and that turns out to also be true for Paddington once he receives a surprising letter in the mail.

The missive is from the Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman) who runs the Peruvian Home for Retired Bears where Lucy resides. Apparently, Paddington’s aunt desperately wants to see him and, moreover, “something is not right” with her. This naturally concerns the young bear, and when Henry makes a sarcastic joke about going to check on her in South America, the rest of the clan seizes upon it and forces his hand, instigating a cross-continental trip.

For Paddington, this journey is facilitated by his recently acquired UK passport. Still, he’s wrestling with his newfound British citizenship and, with it, his “mixed feelings” about where he came from and where he is now—a topic that he discusses with old pal Samuel Gruber (Jim Broadbent), who owns a mysterious bear statue that sparks a long-buried memory about Paddington’s past.

Taking over for original director Paul King (Wonka), Wilson continues the series’ formal whimsicality, with clever compositions lending the proceedings a requisite storybook quality. As when snapshots of Paddington and Henry’s overseas flight are projected onto clouds, Paddington in Peru exhibits a compositional dexterity and inventiveness that adds to its energy.

It likewise keeps the momentum brisk with slapstick sequences involving Paddington fumbling and bumbling about, be it in a photo booth or at the steering wheel of a riverboat. Wilson maintains a merry tone that’s enhanced by deft staging and excellent CGI effects that bring Paddington to sensitive, silly, and empathetic life—a feat aided in no small part by Whishaw’s pitch-perfect vocal performance.

At the retired bear enclave, Paddington and the Browns hear that Lucy is missing. Clues discovered in her room reveal an apparent answer to her whereabouts: She’s gone to a distant locale known as Rumi Rock. Thus, an adventure into the wild is born, with lively Mrs. Bird (Jessica Walters) left behind with Reverend Mother, whose constant remarks that things are not “suspicious” indicate that she’s up to something secretive.

With big beaming eyes and an even merrier smile, Colman is an absolute delight as the nun, prancing about with cartoonish giddiness from the moment she first delivers an amusing musical number that culminates with her throwing her guitar into the air, twirling around on a hillside in The Sound of Music fashion, and then catching the instrument to complete the song. Like Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant before her, she’s perfectly in tune with the film’s mirthful, madcap spirit

So too is Antonio Banderas as Hunter Cabot, a ship captain who agrees—along with his daughter Gina (Carla Tous)—to take the clan down river to find Rumi Rock. Hunter is a member of a family of treasure hunters, and he’s regularly haunted by his conquistador ancestor, who wants him to abandon everything and succumb to “gold madness.”

Intermittently donning costumes to play his long-dead relatives (including a priest, a prospector, and a female pilot), Banderas is sweetly suave and deranged, and his Hunter eventually explicates that Rumi Rock is thought to be the key to locating El Dorado and its famed riches. Paddington, however, cares little for wealth; his focus remains staunchly on reuniting with Lucy.

During the course of his trek into this heart of darkness, Paddington navigates rope bridges strung high above imposing chasms, braves rapids that threaten to smash Hunter’s ship to pieces, and attempts to avoid the red prickly plants that dot the Peruvian landscape.

True danger, though, is rarely evident in Paddington in Peru, which cares less about pulse-pounding suspense than good-natured ridiculousness involving Paddington tussling with a hammock and floating through the air on the umbrella he received as a gift from his London neighbors. Questions of displacement and identity run gently beneath the surface, but Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont’s script is primarily about understanding that regardless of your origins, what matters most is cherishing what you have and the people you love.

Despite its rambunctious commotion, Paddington in Peru never loses sight of its hero’s inherent goodness, such that its finale hinges on the bear giving a “hard stare” to a conflicted adversary in order to remind them to have manners, be kind, and value their real treasure.

Wilson’s sequel may be slightly less imaginative than 2017’s critically acclaimed Paddington 2 but it’s just as upbeat and compassionate, championing the virtues of selflessness, altruism, generosity, and togetherness via a rollicking saga that recognizes that life isn’t static and yet one’s feelings about family and friends are often steadfast.

No matter that it’s made for kids, it’s a film that—like its predecessors—is a breath of fresh air, especially considering the toxicity of the moment in which it’s being released.