Joel Fry-days / Other Doctor Lives: Paddington 2 (2017, PG)

*Premise spoilers.*

I watched this movie a few years ago and wrote a review for Other Doctor Lives, but I have enough of a backlog of write-ups that I’d not gotten around to posting it—whenever it came time to post about Peter Capaldi stuff, this review was always getting bumped for something newer. But it worked out well, because now it can double as Other Doctor Lives and Joel Fry-days! Although there’s not much Peter Capaldi and even less Joel Fry, it’s still a cute film that was fun to revisit. The brunt of this post will be the review I wrote when I saw it the first time, with bonus Joel Fry observations added in.

Back when I reviewed the first Paddington film, I mentioned how pleasantly surprised I was with it. After the second movie came out, I heard a lot of praise for it, but I didn’t get around to seeing it until several years later, when it popped up on one of the free streaming services. But having crossed it off my list, I heartily agree with the critics and viewers about what a great film it is.

Paddington has picked out the perfect gift for his Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday: a vintage “popping book” depicting all the famous landmarks of London. He buckles down to save up for the present, but before he has a chance to buy it, it’s stolen from the shop. Even worse, Paddington was there when it happened, so now he’s being accused of the burglary! What’s a well-meaning, lovably clumsy bear to do?

I’m not going to pretend that this movie is Casablanca or anything, or even Inside Out or Encanto. It’s not. Of course it’s not. But that’s not to sell it short in any way. Instead, I’d say it reminds me of School of Rock, which I classify as a perfect film because it does precisely what it sets out to do. That’s what Paddington 2 does. It’s absolutely the best Paddington 2 it can be, and that makes for a pretty delightful viewing experience.

There are the more expected elements, such as Paddington’s abiding love for marmalade sandwiches and his uncanny ability to cause whimsical mayhem with his clumsiness—his various attempts to get a job are predictably fraught with calamity and slapstick. There are gentle lessons, wherein he worries that the Brown family will believe everything the papers are saying about him when he runs into his legal troubles. And there’s also so much that’s wonderfully unexpected.

One of those unexpected things is one Phoenix Buchanan, a preening actor who’s desperate to hold onto his fading glory. He’s extra in the best way—at one point, he proclaims, “I am tickled the deepest shade of shrimp!” He keeps his old costumes on mannequins as a sort of shrine to his career, and he occasionally talks to himself in the voices of his characters, from Magwitch to Hamlet to Poirot. His presence in the film is ridiculous and endlessly entertaining, and he offers us a great take on Shakespeare’s famous bit of stage direction from The Winter’s Tale.

I also actually love the scenes where Paddington is in prison, because they show so sweetly and gently what rehabilitation could be like. Surrounded by fellow inmates who are all demonstrably bigger and more imposing than Paddington, many of whom put on a display of toughness, Paddington moves hearts and minds with kindness and marmalade sandwiches. Obviously, the road to reimagining the justice system is more complicated than a CGI bear going, Well, what if we made it nice?, but it’s lovely to see how he and his new friends in prison transform the place, helping each other out as they improve the prison in every way.

The main actors from the first film return here, naturally. Ben Whishaw’s gentle, lovable Paddington leads the way with warmth and quiet humor, and Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, and Julie Walters are all back. Hugh Grant appears to be having the time of his life as Phoenix—it’s a performance that’s so big it borders on panto, but it really works. The film also features the likes of Jessica Hynes, Jim Broadbent, and Brendan Gleeson as a gruff prison cook.

Not much of Peter Capaldi’s Mr. Curry, but what little we get from him is well done. His anti-bear attitudes haven’t changed since the first movie, so of course he feels thoroughly vindicated when Paddington gets in trouble with the law. He goes around crowing I-told-you-so’s like a punk, and he establishes his own Community Defense Force for so-called public safety. I smiled when he exclaims, “I’ve raised the neighborhood panic level to wild hysteria!”

Joel Fry makes the teeniest of appearances. He’s credited simply as “Postman,” although the Browns’ housekeeper Mrs. Bird calls him Joe. His total screentime is under a minute, and most of that isn’t in the foreground of the frame. While the Browns are trying to prove Paddington’s innocence, they need to commit some light mail shenanigans, so Mrs. Bird distracts Joe while Mary gets up to her espionage. As such, he’s more of a plot device than a character, but he does ask after Paddington, and this exchange amuses me:

MRS. BIRD: “Hello, Joe! What a surprise! What are you doing here?” 

JOE: “Ah, you know, posting letters.”

Hee! Very cute. There’s a third Paddington movie, which I haven’t seen yet. Peter Capaldi isn’t in that one but Joel Fry is, so we’ll see what kind of a glimpse we get of him there.

Accent Watch

Peter Capaldi – London.

Joel Fry – Southern British English, I think—he only has a few lines.

Recommend?

In General – If you have any inclination towards kids’ movies/family films, I would. This is fun, charming, and sweet.

Peter Capaldi – A soft maybe. If you’re watching it purely for Capaldi, you’re going to get ten minutes tops of him in a fairly undemanding role, so it might not feel worth it. But whenever he is onscreen, he’s entertaining.

Joel Fry – Naw, he’s hardly in it.

Warnings

Some “don’t try this at home,” scary moments for kids, a little gross-out humor, and some thematic elements.

 

Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: W1A: Series 3, Episode 6 (2017)

*Spoilers from episode 5*

This is the last episode of W1A, although there’s also a short special from 2020 that David Tennant narrated. So I’ve got a bit more for the show with Other Doctor Lives, but this is the end for Joel Fry-days.

The Less is More Initiative strikes again: it’s just come out that Head of Values, Head of Output, and Director of Better and being rolled into one new position. Matt has already cut his losses, so now Ian and Anna are left to decide whether they want to apply for it. To Izzy’s surprise, she learns that Will managed to pull out a last-minute save for the Hugh Grant fiasco. Everything comes to a head, where else? At the BBC Me launch.

Our last character of the week is Fiona Craig, played by Pooky Quesnel. She’s the civil servant who’s been working with the BBC on the contract negotiations. Fiona doesn’t have a very big role in the finale, but she’s at the BBC Me launch with everybody else.

I won’t get into spoilers, but there’s a little of everything quintessentially W1A here. Ian trying to pin things down in a meeting where no one wants to commit to anything. David not realizing he’s just thrown a huge wrench into things and Siobhan offering a very bad idea as a “fix.” Mostly unspoken love triangle stuff between Ian, Anna, and Lucy. A major crisis at a key movement that Ian has to step in and smooth over.

I like how things shake out with Will, Izzy, and Jack. Often, Will’s wins have been completely by accident, but this time, he sets out with a specific plan and it actually pays off. We also get a good full-circle moment for On Your Bike that’s nice to see.

Here’s what we’ve got for David Tennant’s narration today:

• This is how Tennant introduces David making everything worse at the eleventh hour  – “Even though it’s already been a big week at the BBC, for those that haven’t managed to get out of the building yet, it’s just got even bigger.”
• As the characters deal with an unfolding/urgent crisis, this made me smile – “They need to think of something fast, and worse still, something good.”

Karl and the rest of Siobhan’s team are at the BBC Me launch. Ostensibly, they’re there to help run things (I think? they all have their tablets with them,) but more than anything, they wind up serving more of a hype man role. Most of their lines are simply “yay!”, shouted after Siobhan or anyone else says something significant.

As such, Joel Fry doesn’t get to do much for his final episode. It’s an improvement over the Twenty Twelve finale, but not by much. Karl continues his habit of often being a little behind the others, at one point chiming in with a “yay!” when Barney and Coco don’t do it. And when Siobhan’s explaining some plans involving a smoke machine to the execs, Karl adds, “With, like, real smoke.” Oh, Karl!

Okay, last thoughts on the Joel Fry portion of W1A (I’ll do my David Tennant wrap-up next week): 

Accent Watch

Southern British English.

Recommend?

In General – A soft maybe. It’s amusing, but it gets too repetitive for me.

Joel Fry – I would. It can be hard to watch at times when the others are mean to Karl, but he’s always hilarious and endearing to me! 

Other Doctor Lives: W1A: Series 3, Episode 5 (2017)

*Mild spoilers for episode 4*

I watched Twenty Twelve and W1A a number of months ago and have had my reviews written up for a while, but when I went to post about this episode for last week’s Other Doctor Lives, I found just the notes I’d taken during my initial watch—somewhere along the line, I’d missed writing the review and had never gotten back around to it. Whoops! Anyway, I just rewatched this, the penultimate episode of W1A, to jog my memory and to write a new review of it.

There are a couple fresh crises brewing at the BBC. Claudia Winkleman, longtime host of Strictly Come Dancing, has been offered a deal with a rival network and is considering walking. While the executives scramble to find a way to woo her into staying, Izzy and Jack are met with a crisis of their own. Last week, Will had an unexpected win when he got Hugh Grant to film a “Super Me” ahead of the BBC Me launch. The only problem is, Grant didn’t realize it was for a viral marketing campaign—because, of course, Will didn’t explain things clearly—and now he’s upset about the BBC using his image without permission.

We’re getting two characters of the week this time around, because they’ve been a package deal from the start of the series. Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez play a pair of interchangeable junior executives, the terrifically-named Ben Rosenstern and Jerry Guildencrantz. As their surnames would suggest, much of their humor throughout the series has come from Ian and other executives generally being unable to tell which is which. They’re both quintessential yes-man and have a particular habit of echoing whatever Simon says in meetings. This past season, they’ve gotten their own mini-subplot. Like Lucy, their positions have been targeted by the BBC Less is More initiative, with two jobs being reduced to one. This has caused friction between them as each tried to distinguish himself from the other and prove he was the one worth keeping around. The subplot comes to its conclusion in this episode.

Claudia Winkleman is wanting to take on more serious projects, and the new offer she’s received would allow her to branch out from her role as the host of a popular but insubstantial show like Strictly Come Dancing. Losing her would be a huge blow to the BBC, so the execs are desperate to satisfy her. There’s an amusing pitch session where they search for anything more serious that they could offer her, and naturally, any time you have a delicate meeting with onscreen talent where it’s critical for everything to go right, it’s not great to have both Siobhan and David involved.

The Hugh Grant debacle has quickly spiraled out of hand. In addition to removing his image from the BBC Me marketing, he’s demanding that the BBC apologize by making a charitable donation of over a million pounds. As Izzy panics over the situation, Jack tries to convince her that her best option is blaming the whole thing on Will.

Some nice David Tennant narration today. Here were my favorite bits from him:

• This one cracked me up – “Meanwhile, upstairs, what was supposed to be a renewal meeting mainly about something called ‘distinctivity’ has spontaneously turned into an emergency damage limitation meeting mostly about disaster.”
• Nicely worded – “Elsewhere in the building, Jack Patterson and Izzy Gould have taken some time out to have an argument.”
• This is such a textbook W1A line – “It seems that the BBC is shortly to announce a major senior management simplification, which follows the pattern of encouraging more staff to apply for fewer jobs by abolishing the ones they’ve already got.”