LANGUAGE WARNING: ON VIDEO CLIP
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
For a short time, the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer rating for Paddington 2 was higher than Citizen Kane, which led some Internet pundits to claim that the bear was a better movie than Welles’ opus. But it was not to be…for long. The current ratings (as I wrote these words) show that the two movies are tied with a 99% rating! So are these two films equal to one another? Maybe. I still think, and have said here before that I think The Third Man is the best movie ever made but even Pedro Pascal (in the above video clip) claims that Paddington 2 is his third favorite movie.
At this point in time, everybody knows the plot of Citizen Kane and I don’t want to ruin the plot of Paddington 2—NO SPOILERS—to say that the director, Paul King, who also directed Paddington, pulls out all the stops and combines whimsy with sentiment to tell a timeless story that everybody in the family will enjoy. And while the plot has twists and turns you pretty know how it will turn out, although there may be a few surprises in there. The most amazing aspect of this movie is nothing you see turns out to be what you expect to see. King has raised the bar for a fantasy film and he has also directed the upcoming Wonka, so I have great hopes for that film as well. The visuals in this film are stunning turning the cliches and standard tropes of family films on their ear creating breathtaking visual sequences that will leave you stunned by their audacity–and humanity or ursine-ness —of the script which King also wrote. This is a magical film that exceeds anything recent produced by Disney or Pixar or anybody else for that matter.
Some Other Thoughts
The 4k version of Citizen Kane was announced by the Criterion Collection on August 11, 2021 and I immediately ordered my copy and waited…and while there was that snafu with the Blu-ray disc I happily added the movie to my personal Criterion collection. But that was it. The movie just sat on the shelf although I did make time to look at some of the extras. Recently I picked up a Blu-ray copy of Paddington 2 from the library and Mary watched it together. And I must confess that like Pascal and Cage I was tearing up during the very Capra-esque ending only to laugh my butt off at the unexpected and dazzling musical number that’s embedded in the credits. Is Paddington 2 a masterpiece? Maybe not, but it’s darn close to one. Oh, and the Citizen Kane 4K disc? I haven’t watched it yet.
I will say this…if you haven’t seen Paddington 2, you should.
On a personal note, if you are wondering when the next Joe’s Movie Club video in my YouTube channel will appear, I promise it will be real soon now.