Paddington 2

Paul King's Paddington 2 opened in 2017 and was nominated for the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film. The film became a continuing cultural-critical phenomenon, for several months in 2021 the film held a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes critical score across the largest sample of major critics ever assembled at that level (eventually broken by a single dissenting review). The film's continuing reach has been substantial; many critics have placed it as the rare Hollywood-budget-level family sequel that exceeds its original.

Paddington has now settled into the Brown family's London household. As his Aunt Lucy's hundredth birthday approaches, he sets out to find her the perfect present, a beautiful pop-up book of London he has spotted in Mr Gruber's antique shop. He is framed for the theft of the book and ends up in prison, where he gradually charms the hardened convicts (led by Brendan Gleeson's Knuckles McGinty) while the Brown family conducts the investigation outside to identify the actual thief.

Hugh Grant's central performance as the washed-up theatre actor turned thief Phoenix Buchanan is widely cited as one of the most-loved Grant performances of his career, Grant himself has said the role transformed his attitude to acting in his late career. The film operates simultaneously as broad family comedy and sustained character-cinema register; its continuing reach has been extraordinary. Paddington in Peru (2024) extended the franchise; the second film remains the canonical entry.