A friend once memorably described the first Peter Rabbit movie as basically “Deadpool for kids”. That turned out to be fairly accurate. It was a largely fun movie, safe for kids, that was somehow both respectful to Beatrix Potter’s original works as well as full of the sort of slapstick and meta-humor that appears in a lot of modern kids movies. I liked it, but I wouldn’t say I loved it.
It turned out the movie did well enough to justify a sequel, albeit one from a different studio, and after being put off for a year by the pandemic, is finally out in theaters.
Opening with the wedding of Bea (Rose Byrne) to Tom McGregor (Domhnall Gleason), the movie shows Peter Rabbit (voice of James Corden) feeling a lot of general insecurity. If Bea is his mother figure, does that make Tom his father? And what does it mean when everyone seems to blame Peter for everything that goes wrong? True, some things are his fault, but others are not, and the actions of the other rabbits, particularly Peter’s three sisters, are often overlooked. And while Peter’s sensible cousin Benjamin Bunny (Colin Moody) counsels Peter to maybe cause less trouble, his sisters have their own problems. Flopsy (Margot Robbie) is tired of being mistaken for Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki) while Cottontail (Aimee Horne, replacing Daisy Ridley) discovers the joys of sugar.
Things come to a head when a big time publisher (David Oyelowo) contacts Bea, looking to mass market her book about Peter and the rabbits. Bea, enamored by the possibilities of success, seems eager to compromise her vision, much to Tom’s dismay, but then Peter wanders away and meets Barnabus (Lennie James), a street rabbit in the nearby city who claims to know Peter’s late father. Barnabus, with a gang of his own, encourages Peter to join his gang of thieves. Will Peter settle down and be good on Bea and Tom’s farm, or will he take up a life of fun crime in the city, potentially dragging the rest of his family along with him?
Much like before, the movie walks a fine line between being sort of respectful to Potter’s stories (the rabbits and other talking animals are maybe a bit crazy, but they’re also generally respectful to each other) while also pointing out how much these movies are nothing like Potter’s old books (there’s some rather blatant commentary on that in this one, including one fourth wall break by a character other than Peter on the subject). Still, the movie avoids blatant pop culture references outside of a squirrel that sings pop songs at various points. Peter learns some lessons, he and Tom maybe bond a bit, and the humans have to decide if they want to sell out their principals or not. It’s not exactly new story ground, and the slapstick portions have a very Home Alone feel to them, but these bits still largely work.
I wouldn’t call Peter Rabbit 2 a great movie, but I would say it would be fine for kids. There weren’t many people in the theater with me when I went to see it, but the kids in there laughed loud and often enough, plus the movie itself was probably not going to annoy any parent stuck watching it too much. The meta humor is more for those parents while the slapstick is a bit more universal. There’s a lot going on here between the human and animal plots, and the movie actually manages to juggle them all rather well. It may not be perfect, but there are a lot of worse movies out there for kids these days.
Grade: B
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