Peter Rabbit (2018)
Directed by Will Gluck
Peter Rabbit's feud with Mr. McGregor escalates to greater heights than ever before as they rival for the affections of the warm-hearted animal lover who lives next door.
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6 films that influenced Peter Rabbit
What critics say influenced Peter Rabbit
He's akin to Joe Pesci from Home Alone with a nitpicky brain.
What develops rests somewhere between Byrne’s Neighbors movies and the Home Alone movies: a community competition with nasty slapstick battles: since he gets to be both Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, Gleeson takes the full brunt of hurled projectiles and electrified doorknobs.
This ought not to have raised an eyebrow in a movie that owes as much to Home Alone as it does to Beatrix Potter’s best-known creation.
Filled with cartoon-style comic violence – some of which is downright nasty (an electrocution and a fight that leads to a controversial allergy attack among them – see notes below) – this lacks the charm of children’s book adaptations like Paddington and Babe and instead feels more like a furry version of Home Alone .
Peter Rabbit is structured like the third act of Home Alone, with Gleeson standing in for the burglars, and Peter Rabbit and his coterie of animated animals in the Macaulay Culkin role, and the two sides clashing largely with sophisticated booby traps.
The slapstick humor is akin to Home Alone levels of violence, which seems out of place for the age group that’s coming to see a talking rabbit.
For the titular Peter Rabbit (James Corden) and his sisters, Flopsy (Margot Robbie), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki), and Cottontail (Daisy Ridley) are all superlatively realistic-looking creations: brought into life by the artists at Animal Logic, the Australian VFX and animation studio that has been one of the world's foremost creators of impressively real-looking animal CGI since their role in making the farmyard population of 1995's Babe look so profoundly convincing (their "photorealistic animals" animated features include the delightful Happy Feet and its sequel , as well as Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole , which is a crap movie, but a beautiful crap movie * ).
The fact that the action occurs on two different physical scales creates a visual problem Gluck has little interest in solving – as George Miller did triumphantly with actual animals in his Babe movies.
As I say in my video review, this certainly is not as effortlessly charming, winsome and warm as the Paddington films or 1995’s barnyard gem Babe , but it does quite well on its own thanks to terrifically realized CGI rabbits and the vocal work of James Corden in the title role.
If there’s a Hall of Fame for live-action actors excelling in communication with animated counterparts, Gleeson is in the conversation with the Bob Hoskins/“Roger Rabbit,” Michael Jordan/“Space Jam” and Don Knotts/“The Incredible Mr. Limpet” holy trinity.
Based on Beatrix Potter‘s beloved, century-old British literary mainstay, this CG/live-action hybrid adaptation enlists Will Gluck, the American director/co-writer behind an inconsistent batch of studio comedies, including “Easy A,” “Friends With Benefits,” “Fired Up” and 2014’s “Annie” remake, to bring this early 20th century garden rabbit to the new millennium.
Directed by Easy A ‘s Will Gluck from a screenplay co-written by Rob Lieber, the film combines the acting talents of Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, and Sam Neill and the voices of James Corden, Margot Robbie, Elizabeth Debicki, and Daisy Ridley as Peter, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, respectively, to bring the Beatrix Potter creations to CGI life.
Will Gluck, the director and co-writer of this ‘thing’, has had something of a bumpy filmography with the terrible Fired Up!, the excellent Easy A, the enjoyable Friends With Benefits, and the huge misfire that was the Annie remake, but to this reviewer, Peter Rabbit was the one that was the most hateful since it serves as the dictionary definition of how not to adapt a beloved book series to the screen.
Had I never read a single one of Potter’s books as a child, I can say with conviction I would still have loathed director Will Gluck’s ( Annie , Easy A) distasteful adaptation.
Writer/director Will Gluck (Easy A) adds a heaping spoonful of romance.
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In theory, the folks at Sony Pictures Animation (the studio behind “Stuart Little”) and Animal Logic (which brought us “Babe” and “Charlotte’s Web”) seem like the perfect stewards of that legacy.
It’s as if someone attempted to make “Charlotte’s Web” into an action movie while leaving out the actual lessons or ideas.
He nurses a weird post- Bee Movie interspecies crush on a human.