Film - Peter Rabbit

Having been put off seeing this by hearing how rubbish it was from people who haven’t seen it, this week, I went anyway.Sure, it isn’t Paddington but it has it charms. It may not be exactly how Beatrix Potter imagined her characters coming to life but come to life they do. I recall Peter Rabbit being mischievous rather than ultra-violent but he is up against two generations of horrid bunny-hating, rabbit pie loving men, both the deceased Great Uncle and his beneficiary. Peter Rabbit sees the McGregor garden as the home of his orphaned rabbit family as well as a food source so the high jinks between the man and the rabbit entertain us.I love that his best pal, is the hapless cousin Benjamin who goes along with all is elaborate ideas to steal obtain food. And that Harrods is depicted as Harrods rather than a pretend London shop, where the rabbits at one point end up, in the toy department of course.Benjamin is the only character we can really route for, as Peter’s three siblings jut follow their big brother around.You can really imagine the only other householder, animal lover Rose, who the rabbits adore, falling for rabbit-hater Mr McGregor but she seems to. In an irritating slapstick style, she seems to be blind to all his attempts to blast Peter Rabbit and co from his garden so we don’t really care about her love life. Or how she affords to live in-house in the country at such a young age without actually selling any of her modern art. Or indeed why she doesn’t sell her portraits of the rabbits, depicted as Ms Potter would have drawn herself.But it’s a kid’s film and the number of times some kid in the cinema shouted ‘is he dead?’ made it somehow worthwhile to see.6/10