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: Black Mirror: Season 7, Episode 4 – “Plaything” (2025)

*Episode premise spoilers*

As it happens, the only other episode of Black Mirror I’ve watched was also an Other Doctor Lives project, with Jodie Whittaker as a guest star. This time around, we’ve got an episode with a major role for Peter Capaldi.

When Cameron Walker tries to steal a bottle of liquor, a police DNA scan flags him in connection with an old unsolved murder. He’s brought in for questioning, but Cameron is less interested in discussing the murder itself than telling the psych evaluator about the “formative” experiences that led to it. The eccentric man spins a tale from the ‘90s involving a reclusive tech genius and the development of the first digital lifeforms in existence.

I know Black Mirror stories often involve near-future technology and its impact on society, so it’s interesting that this story, while set in the near future, is largely focused on the near past. While the older Cameron sits in the police station telling his story, most of the action occurs in the past. That’s in part because, in this instance, the technology we’re examining needed time to “grow” and develop.

Young Cameron, a reviewer for a gaming magazine, is invited to a private meeting with Colin Ritman, a tech prodigy who’s only recently returned to the scene after a breakdown. Cameron thinks he’s there to preview Colin’s new game, but Colin has much bigger things in mind. The “game” is merely a ruse to get funding: in actuality, he’s created the Thronglets, sentient lifeforms built from code. He pushes back on Cameron’s early misunderstandings—there’s not an objective, the Thronglets don’t exist for the user to make them do things, there doesn’t need to be a “point” to make them worthwhile. “We have to create software that elevates us, improves us as human beings,” Colin urges, “or else what is the fucking point of the tools at our disposal?”

Despite his initial confusion and skepticism, Cameron becomes increasingly enthralled by the Thronglets, spending more and more of his days caring for them and trying to understand their unique method of communication. It takes quite a while to get to the circumstances of the murder, which is tied up in Cameron’s obsession with the Thronglets and the victim’s inability to recognize their significance. It’s an interesting little yarn. Cameron’s characterization hits the “unstable loner” button pretty hard, but it also explores what can happen if someone vulnerable begins to see their computer as their only friend (after all, we’re currently living in an age of ChatGPT psychosis.)

Since most of the story’s action is taking place in the past, we spend a lot of the episode in flashbacks, where Cameron is played by Lewis Gribben. Colin, by the way, is played by Will Poulter—I’ve since gotten to know him through other things, of course, but Eustace Scrubb will always be the first character that comes to mind when I see him. With Peter Capaldi playing the older Cameron, that means we only see him in the present-day scenes in the police station, along with his narration over the flashbacks.

This is an interesting performance. The older Cameron is awkward and eccentric but fairly outgoing. During the police interview, he manages to control the flow of the conversation pretty well, all but ignoring the detective in favor of talking to the psych evaluator. His main focus is on the Thronglets, and he throws in other random details about his troubled past. He describes his dad as “an unpredictable violent giant who could never be appeased,” which is a hell of a line.

Cameron honestly could not care less that he’s been picked up in connection with a murder. He’s perfectly content where he is, and Capaldi has some fun with that in his performance. He waggles his fingers at the security camera, calling, “Hey, peekaboo!”, and he dismissively refers to the detective as “the chief…detective thingamabobby.”

Accent Watch

Scottish.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. The two episodes I’ve seen of Black Mirror haven’t seen me running to watch more, but I’ve enjoyed both of them.

Peter Capaldi – I think so. The flashback structure means Capaldi’s role is smaller than Gribbens’s, but he does well with it.

Warnings

Violence, language, drug use, and strong thematic elements. 

Other Doctor Lives: Big Fat G***y Gangster (2011)

This is one of the few Peter Capaldi projects I couldn’t get my hands on back when I was tearing through his filmography ahead of his debut as the Twelfth Doctor. And now that it’s finally popped up for free online…I can see why. This is not a good movie.

Bulla, the titular gangster, has just gotten out of prison. An infamous local legend, Bulla’s release is captured by a documentary film crew, who record his homecoming. Bulla is crass and violent with a hair-trigger temper, but he also cares deeply about his community and goes all out when he learns that his aunt is in danger of losing her pub.

So yeah, it’s a mockumentary-meets-British-gangster-film. To be fair, I’m not very well-versed in British gangster films, so maybe there are some tried-and-true plot beats that are parodied here. But even if I was better acquainted with the genre, I still doubt I’d like this film. The plot is meandering, and most of the humor just relies on being loud and crude. There’s not really anything to interest me here.

What’s more, the film’s go-to move is cheap stereotypes. Bulla, his family, and a number of his associates are Romani (although none of the main actors seem to be,) and while I’m not very familiar with what stereotypes are associated with Romani communities in Britain today, I can feel the lazy ethnic “humor” coming through on the screen. Meanwhile, the film’s de facto antagonist—the cop who put Bulla away—is gay, so we’re given plenty of crass gay jokes as well. Plus, there’s a whole running theme of the gangsters buying and selling men with dwarfism who’ve been “bred” as fighters. These characters, by and large, are treated more like animals than people, and the nondisabled characters place bets on the “m****t fights.” Pretty ugly all around.

Peter Capaldi appears briefly as Bulla’s prison therapist, Peter Van Gellis. As a condition of his release, Bulla is required to continue his anger management sessions with Peter, and from what little we see, it looks like a mixed bag. During an interview, in the middle of casting doubt on Bulla’s ability to control his anger, Peter goes on a tirade about the boom mic being too close to his face, swearing and threatening the boom guy. “Sorry—that’s not for publication, okay?” he says once he calms down. And the one session we see him conducting with Bulla goes downhill on a dime. While helping him unpack some traumatic childhood memories, Peter is a little too emphatic about the possibility of sexual abuse, which leads to Bulla screaming that Peter is accusing his mom of being a “nonce.”

He’s only in a few short scenes, and on the whole, there isn’t much there. Mostly, we get people shouting about anger management therapy.

Accent Watch

Scottish.

Recommend?

In General – Naw. Thin, riddled with stereotypes, and unfunny.

Peter Capaldi – Not necessary. This is a minor role without much for Capaldi to do, and it’s not worth watching this movie just to see his part.

Warnings

Violence (including sexual violence,) language (including racist and ableist insults,) sexual content, drinking/smoking/drug references, thematic elements, gross stereotypical humor, and lots of Romani characters that I’m guessing are played by non-Romani actors.