Peter Rabbit is a 2018 live-action/computer-animated comedy film directed by Will Gluck from a screenplay by Rob Lieber and Gluck, based on the stories of Peter Rabbit created by Beatrix Potter. The film stars Domhnall Gleeson, Rose Byrne, and Sam Neill, with the voices of James Corden, Daisy Ridley, Margot Robbie, and Elizabeth Debicki. The film was released on February 9, 2018, received mixed to positive reviews from critics and has grossed $184 million worldwide, making it the 8th highest-grossing film of 2018.
Based on the books by Beatrix Potter: Peter Rabbit (James Corden) his threes sisters: Flopsy (Margot Robbie,) Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki) and Cotton Tail (Daisy Ridley) and their cousin Benjamin (Colin Moody) enjoy their days harassing Mr McGregor in his vegetable garden. Until one day he dies and no one can stop them roaming across his house and lands for a full day or so. However, when one of Mr McGregor’s relatives inherits the house and goes to check it out, he finds much more than he bargained for. What ensues, is a battle of wills between the new Mr McGregor and the rabbits. But when he starts to fall in love with Bea (Rose Byrne,) a real lover of all nature, his feelings towards them begin to change. But is it too late?
Yeah, the trailers for this looked really, really bad and not only that, this was Sony, a company that became notorious for releasing really bad stuff like The Emoji Movie and a lot of the more disappointing movies from 2017 such as Life, Rough Night, The Dark Tower, Smurfs: The Lost Village, Roman J. Israel Esq., and The Star. And then all of a sudden, the year ended with a major surprise in Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, which was not only good but surprisingly really good.
So, could Sony pull off another surprise with Peter Rabbit? Were the trailers misleading the audiences into thinking this was going to be bad or is there actual merit here?
Well, a little bit of both. This movie was actually a surprisingly fun movie to watch, heavily flawed in many areas but fun nonetheless.
There’s a lot of great bizarre fun moments in this in which some of the stuff Peter Rabbit does to get Thomas McGregor out reaches insanity levels that are more on the level of a Bugs Bunny cartoon…and yet it’s still pretty funny too. I don’t know what it is but these and some other insane hilarious moments kind of worked, it reminded me kind of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water where they would have just these insane out of nowhere moments that are reminiscent of how kids movies used to be back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s where they just didn’t care who was going to be offended, they were going to do it. And you know what, kudos to them, they actually made the movie more watchable.
The cast themselves are fine, James Corden is good as the voice of Peter Rabbit, I really liked the voice work by Margot Robbie, Elizabeth Debicki, and Daisy Ridley. Even somebody like Sia has a fun voice role in this. Rose Byrne and Domnhall Gleason are perfectly fine in this, even though Rose Byrne comes off as a little too ditzy in this.
My biggest problem with the film is that the story is a little too generic and clichéd and when the jokes really fall flat, they really fall flat, there are some really lazy misfire jokes in this that even the most generic of kids movies wouldn’t even make, that’s how lazy some of them are.
Peter Rabbit is surprisingly not as bad as those trailers made it out to be, it has a lot of wit and charm to it that makes it worth watching but the script is not very strong and when the jokes are bad, they are really bad. Overall, this is a movie that I would suggest if you’re going to see it in a theater, see it at the earliest time possible or just wait for it to hit Blu-Ray, it’s worth the watch.
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