by Nick Ferro, Contributing Writer
After a long year of endeavoring to find ways to entertain a six- and eight-year-old every weekend, we were excited to add a trip to the theater back to our list of options! My girls were incredibly excited to see Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway and I was cautiously optimistic. We collectively loved 2018’s Peter Rabbit, which was unexpected. The trailers leading up to its release made it look like a “keep-your-kids-busy-for-90-minutes-so-you-can-take-a-nap” kind of movie. So when I ended up laughing as much as the kids throughout the whole movie, no one was more surprised than me. The first movie drew me in with its Looney Tunes brand of humor and cartoon physics in the real world. It had a Man vs. Bunny premise that was reminiscent of Elmer vs. Bugs, and we had a lot of fun. When trailers for the sequel came out, it looked like your typical kid’s movie sequel — all our favorite characters were back, but dialed up to 11. Since the original’s trailers didn’t do them any favors, I was prepared for the worst but was still hopeful for another surprise. So did the sequel surprise me like the original? Not really, but it tried and I appreciate the effort.
The poorly subtitled (don’t worry, I’ll get to that) Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway picks up shortly after where the original left off, opening on Bea (Rose Byrne) and Thomas McGregor’s (Domhnall Gleeson) wedding. The lovely countryside, affair is immediately ruined by Peter (voiced by James Corden) and his inability to be cool around his nemesis McGregor. The ceremony erupts into pandemonium in an attempt to recreate the heightened cartoon zaniness of the first movie. Of course, the movie wants to have its wedding cake and eat it too by making this whole scene a daydream to remind us that Peter and McGregor have ceased hostilities for Bea’s sake. The newlyweds have a book shop in their small town and are discovered by a charismatic and renowned book publisher (David Oyelowo). He wants to turn Bea’s book “Peter Rabbit” into a mass market franchise of books, cartoons, movies, and merchandise. However, they want to make Peter a villain rather than a lovable rascal, and this sends him off on a small side quest in London.
This brings me to my issue with the title. No one ever runs away in the whole movie, as the title suggests. Sure, Peter wanders off in a sad state, meets some new characters, and burgles a woman of her kitchen full of vegetables, but he runs back into Bea and Thomas by the evening (about 10 minutes screen time). There is a ton of chasing, so in that respect, I suppose you can say they were running away from being chased. But I feel that’s stretching the use of the phrase. The new characters Peter meets are a gang of street hardened animals led by a rabbit named Barnabas (Lennie James). Coincidentally, Barnabas also claims to know Peter’s dad from long ago. They want to enlist Peter to pull off a heist at the Farmer’s Market. Peter, wanting to play into this new “villain” role, agrees to the heist, gets his animal friends and family to help, and as you can imagine, shenanigans ensue.
Most of the cast returns for the sequel and although his role is downgraded in this film, Gleeson is by far the best part of the movie once again. His physical comedy and relationship with the animals make the movie’s comedy work. He is the only character who treats the animals as though they are people, when all the other humans see them as animals, and it keeps me chuckling throughout. The voice talent is as good as the original and has some big names behind the animated characters. But the standout for me was newcomer Aimee Horne, who replaces Daisy Ridley as Cottontail. Cottontail was my six-year-old’s favorite character as she has the funniest moments involving some jellybeans. Oyelowo is a welcome addition to the cast, but sadly does not get much to do. The same goes for Byrne. However, they are both charming and do what they can with the screen time they are given. The movie does what most sequels do and splits up the characters into their own plots, while simultaneously introducing new characters, which doesn’t give anyone enough time to shine on screen.
That leads into one of my biggest gripes, because the human characters were sent on their own story, while the animals had theirs. It removed what really worked about the first movie: McGregor vs. Peter. They are at their best when they are fighting, but they are also at their best when they are working together, and you don’t get much of either until the finale, which is a shame. What also did not work for me was the forced comedy that came mostly from the animated characters. The movie tries to make a meta joke about James Corden’s voice being annoying, but in actuality, it’s the jokes his character drives into the ground repeatedly that are the culprit (I personally don’t find Corden’s voice to be annoying). Some movies like to use the rule of three, where they repeat a bit three times, to emphasize the humor, then move on. This movie uses the rule of five (or six or seven). Sometimes it works, but mostly it just goes on for too long, never really getting funny and just padding the run time. Thankfully, it’s a small problem that only really occurs in the first half of the movie. Once the plot picks up, they rely less on bad jokes and more on telling the story. The story is split evenly between the Rabbit’s plot to commit a heist and the human’s plot sell Bea’s book, but both plots rather lack at times until they join up in the finale which works well to bring back the fun of the original movie.
Overall, Peter Rabbit 2 is an enjoyable family film with some laughs for adults and a ton of laughs for the kids. It does come close to being a “keep-your-kids-busy-for-90-minutes-so-you-can-take-a-nap” movie, but there is just enough to keep a bored parent occupied. This movie had the daunting task of living up to the original and expanding the story. It didn’t really succeed at the former, but did a decent job at the latter. Being a sequel is hard, so when a movie tries it gives me hope for the franchise and I really think they did try. Hopefully, they succeed enough to try again in Peter Rabbit 3: The Search for More Money. At the very least, our trip to the theater was a success as both of my girls enjoyed Peter Rabbit 2 thoroughly. I am sure they will watch it again when it makes its way to streaming, but when they do, unlike the original, I probably will take a nap.
Grade: C+
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