Review of 'Paddington'

A very liberal film which makes much of Paddington's status as an immigrant...he's not really a refugee or an asylum seeker, but parallels are drawn between him and Mr Gruber's experience as a Kindertransport kid, and there's a lot about the need for people to be generous to the displaced and homeless. There's not much about what actually happens to people (or presumably bears) who enter the country illegally; the Brown family just adopts him, and that's that.

Pretty much every British comedy or character actor you can think of is in it, and seem to be having fun. There are lots of cinematic jokes and parodies of other films. I rather thought that Nicole Kidman as the wicked museum curator was reprising her role as Mrs Coulter in The Golden Compass, though she's not quite as menacing here.

Watched in two halves: in the Middle Floor at Springhill via legitimate iTunes download on someone else's laptop and the Springhill projector, and then at home via informally obtained download and Chromestream from my Linux laptop to the Chromecast in our TV. The second of these turned out to be much easier than the first - it took about 40 minutes to get the legitimate version working...first two DVDs didn't work in any of the available DVD players, and then there were issues with getting the mac laptop to talk to the projector.