i had a grand time: i’d gone into the theatre fully ready to scoff (another children’s classic ruined by the family film industry) and emerged full of surprise from paddington. the unavoiable comparison must be “wes andersen-lite” (but maybe even that is unfair.): it was chockful of visual flourishes and incidental details and a storyboard set that was endearing and whimsical and a delight through and through. i did not even really mind the invented taxidermist subplot (which had sounded faintly ridiculous when google told me what it was): i did not expect they could have made a film out of the original, being the episodic and gentle everyday (and largely linguistic) mishaps of a small bear amongst humans. i had been changing trains at dhoby ghaut when from the escalator i saw the words paddington (!) and then ben whishaw (!!), and then more names were gliding into view: peter capaldi! hugh bonneville! julie walters! jim broadbent! sally hawkins! i wavered: i was not impressed when the trailers were filled with slapstick bathroom hijinks (that had been in the book, though) and i did not like the look of paddington (too realistic. i have the opposite complaint about winnie the pooh, who in the books were much more ursine, but in the films made to look a toy.) yet the cast was irresistible, and rotten tomatoes gave it a 97% rating: i caved. (not having any small children to borrow i persuaded the father that i would accompany him to see it.) and furtive was my entry to the cinema but from the moment they opened on high-camp style with black and white reels of ethnographic mockumentary footage, i was unabashedly enjoying myself. it’s a children’s film all right, and more slapstick at times than i’d have liked (oh but to hear the children laughing so uproariously!) but a script full of wit and sly allusions (a winter’s tale, “bear left”) for the grownups (by the way peter capaldi was an excellent mr curry (though i wish he’d been played as the bad-tempered tightwad of the books than the creepy loner in the film, or that he barked “bear!” (he doesn’t.) i should go see it if i were you.