Average Animated Sequel Is Too Much Stick, Not Enough Carrot

The first “Peter Rabbit” film ends with one of many human leads turning the story into an illustrated storybook; “Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway” sees that creator grappling with turning the bunny story right into a grotesque exaggeration of itself as a way to attain a bigger viewers.

And in the identical approach {that a} dangerous dancer apologizing for stepping in your foot doesn’t imply he isn’t stepping in your foot, saying you’re a shameless, market-driven money seize doesn’t imply you’re not a shameless, market-driven money seize.

Meta-text apart, this sequel advantages from the diminished expectations held by nearly anybody who watched its predecessor; this time at the very least, among the gags really land, be they verbal or bodily, plus we get the added delight of David Oyelowo as a smooth-talking writer who thinks the books would promote higher if the rabbits wore T-shirts and high-top sneakers or, even higher, traveled to outer house.

“Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway” opens with the marriage of Bea (Rose Byrne) and McGregor (Domhnall Gleeson); the latter appears to have reached an uneasy détente with the native woodland creatures, who’re allowed to eat something in his backyard aside from his prize tomatoes. McGregor stays suspicious of Peter (voiced by James Corden), and when Oyelowo’s writer desires to create a sequence of books primarily based on Bea’s characters — with Peter forged because the “bad seed” — Peter decides that if he’s going to be handled like a villain, he’ll act like a villain.

He runs off to town and meets up with older rabbit Barnabas (Lennie James, “The Walking Dead”), an previous pal of Peter’s father. This new mentor exhibits Peter the ropes of getting adopted as a pet simply lengthy sufficient to scrub out folks’s kitchens, and he recruits Peter and his buddies into taking part in an enormous heist involving a farmer’s market and a treasure trove of valuable dried fruit.

The script by returning director Will Gluck and Patrick Burleigh has some enjoyable with heist-movie clichés — when an older rat warns in opposition to “messing with the hard stuff,” he’s speaking about jelly beans — and it achieves the movie’s largest laughs with some outrageous visible set-pieces, together with a row of recycling bins was a whack-a-mole, a deer getting strapped right into a parachute, and a intelligent spin on the previous “standing on each other’s shoulders in a man’s raincoat” gag.

Between these periodic delights, nevertheless, the film largely vacillates between inside jokes for the dad and mom (and once more, simply since you’re making enjoyable of the concept of ending a youngsters’ film with a automobile chase, it doesn’t imply you’re not really ending your youngsters’ film with a automobile chase) and exaggerated pratfalls (most of them by Gleeson, overacting all the way in which) for youthful viewers. Like the primary one, “Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway” feels designed to get in on the “Paddington” motion, however with none of the intelligence or sweetness of these modern classics (or of its personal Beatrix Potter supply materials, for that matter).

If there’s a comparability to be made between the franchises, the “Peter Rabbit” movies do successfully combine the animated characters into the human world, giving them heft and substance whereas additionally meticulously highlighting every bunny hair and porcupine quill. But with Peter taking over a lot house — and with Corden doing the voice, just a little of this man goes a great distance — the supporting animals barely get to have personalities, even once they’re voiced by the likes of Margot Robbie (Flopsy) and Elizabeth Debicki (Mopsy).

There are actually much more despicable franchises on the earth of youngsters’s leisure than the “Peter Rabbit” sequence, however there are few this negligible, notably contemplating the expertise concerned. Just since you don’t should intention larger doesn’t imply you shouldn’t attempt.

“Peter Rabbit” opens in Australia on March 25 and within the United States on July…