Paddington 2 (2018)

The second version of this story is much like the first, an unexpected breath of fresh air. It is a delightful mixture of earnestness, slapstick and unabashedly using word play, it manages to charm viewers of all ages while also offering an incisive statement about the importance of being kind to others who may seem foreign or different.  The allegory about immigration it offers is both timely and necessary in the post-Brexit, post-Trump world in which we live.
I am going to remain more or less silent of the plot, other that to say that there is a  pop-up book  that plays a central role in the story, and pay particularly close attention when it is in play.  The sequences in which we see it are the highlight of a film filled with dazzling special effects. Paddington’s fur is vividly tactile, and his immersion in this live-action world is absolutely seamless. When the pages of the pop-up book come to life through a variety of animated styles—and Paddington finds himself wandering through them as he tells the story of Aunt Lucy’s love for London—it’s transporting both visually and emotionally.  A real uplifting movie that left me wondering if I really had to wait another three years for the next one.