Review of Peter Rabbit (2018) by Davidwashere — 02 Jun 2018

This isn't as infuriating as the trailers made it out to be, however there honestly is nothing all that redemptive nor refreshing about this movie. It's a bland kids film with elements that you have seen done a ba-jillion times before, including an overdone story line, obnoxious jokes that are not clever no matter how many times the movie is self-aware (and also repetitive as well with how often the film eschews the rules of three), and all the pop songs that are thrown in there for no real reason (although I do give them props for using Rancid's Time Bomb in there because CLEARLY a song about gang violence definitely needs to be in a kids film). And to top it off the main lead is incredibly unlikable. I will give James Cordon this, he is trying with his role. I mean it's not much, it's basically James Cordon playing James Cordon, but I will take him over Jimmy Fallon trying way to hard to be funny and laughing at his bad material and Jimmy Kimmel's personality of a cardboard box and hollow political beliefs any day of the week. But the problem is that Peter is extremely unlikable in this movie. Yes the scene where Peter (well really one of his sisters but still) poisons Mr. McGregor with his allergy, which is overblown sure, but there is a truth to that scene. Throughout the entire movie, Peter acts smug and arrogant and he faces practically no reproductions nor does he change throughout the movie. It's not endearing, it's aggravating! There are some things that are decent about this movie. Domhnall Gleeson has a decent sense of comedic timing and if he wasn't overacting constantly and given better material then I could see him going well in a comedy. Him and Rose Byrne do have good chemistry, even though Rose Byrne is too good for this movie. The design for the animal characters are pretty good and they do animate well. But the CGI integration is so bad and fake, it often didn't feel like they tried to make it match with the real world as they always look phony, especially when a human is interacting with one of the animal characters.

But honestly the biggest crime with this movie is indifference. I wasn't hate watching this like I would with the Alvin and the Chipmunks films or the Smurfs films or any number of live-action adapted children films, I was just left there with passive loathing. It's not annoying, it's just tiring at this point because there's nothing new this film offers other than a shallow adaption of a classic children's tale. I'm not going to give this film higher than the rating I am giving it, because that would imply that there is more quality than there is. There really isn't. Don't waste your time please.