Beggars can’t be choosers, as they say. And so it is that British cinema’s baron months finally bear fruit. Or should that be carrots? Yes, Peter Rabbit is back. To be precise: Will Gluck’s Peter Rabbit is back. That’s in opposition to the more delicately mischievous creation of Beatrix Potter. Whilst Gluck’s second adventure in Windermere retains the dimly meaner streak of its predecessor, it is somewhat softer around the edges and all the better for it. James Corden is no less horribly miscast as Peter but at least you can root for the winning performances of his live action counterparts: Domnhall Gleason and Rose Byrne.
In what must be one of the least promising opening sequences of recent years, the new Tom & Jerry film – their first in quasi-live action – opens with rapping pigeons, inexplicably hot footing around in thin air. A rat then makes a copyright joke. Give me strength. This one’s over a hundred minutes long.
A couple of things become eminently clear in the first five minutes of Raya and the Last Dragon. The first is that this may well be the crowing visual achievement of Disney’s in house animation team in the post-hand drawn era. It’s gorgeous stuff. Breathtaking. Second, the whole thing is very ‘on-brand’. The twenty-first century Disney Princess owes a lot to the Frozen mould and that’s both a blessing and a curse. When Dwayne Johnson’s Maui cracked the code in Moana – ‘if you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess’ – that was irony. In Raya, it’s marketable. Take that as you will. Raya doesn’t sing but she doesn’t do much we’ve not seen before either.
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