Peter Rabbit (2018)
Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit first appeared in 1902 as a privately printed picture letter, and the little blue-coated rabbit has been a fixture of British childhood ever since. The stories are gentle things: soft watercolours, a walled garden, a bad-tempered gardener, and the quiet moral that mischief has consequences. That legacy is considerable, and it is the sort of material that invites a particular kind of reverence, which makes Will Gluck's 2018 film adaptation a rather curious proposition from the outset. Gluck, an American director best known for the breezy teen comedies Easy A (2010) and Friends with Benefits (2011), is not an obvious custodian of Potter's world. The screenplay, co-written by Gluck and Rob Lieber, transplants the familiar feud between Peter and Mr. McGregor into a louder, faster, more joke-forward register, backed by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation, with Australia's Screen NSW and Screen Australia among the co-producers (the film was shot largely on location in the Blue Mountains, which gives it a lush, open-air look that no studio backlot would have managed quite so convincingly).
The production sits in the well-populated territory of hybrid live-action and CGI family films, a genre that has had its share of polished but unremarkable entries over the years. Cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr. shoots the countryside with a clean, saturated warmth, all dappled light through hedgerows and jewel-bright vegetable patches, the kind of imagery that reads beautifully on a family cinema screen without drawing attention to itself. The animation work rendering Peter and his fellow rabbits is notably seamless in how it integrates with the live-action surroundings, a technical achievement that requires the two worlds to feel genuinely inhabited rather than layered on top of one another. Composer Dominic Lewis provides a score that leans into the action-comedy energy, brisk and percussive where the set pieces demand it, though there are quieter pastoral moments woven through. Editors Christian Gazal and Jonathan Tappin keep the pace tight, rarely letting the film sit still long enough to let the quieter register Potter's source material might have preferred take hold.
The cast is a genuine selling point, at least on paper. James Corden leads the voice ensemble as Peter, a role that requires a performer who can carry the film's considerable comic weight while remaining likeable. Rose Byrne appears in the live-action strand as the warm-hearted neighbour caught between the warring parties, bringing the kind of good-natured comic timing she has made a speciality. Domhnall Gleeson plays the new McGregor, and it is a deliberately physical performance, broad and committed in a way that sits some distance from the cool, controlled work he delivered in Ex Machina. Margot Robbie and Elizabeth Debicki appear among the voice cast, lending the ensemble a starry, slightly incongruous quality that is par for the course in contemporary animation of this budget level. The approach is familiar enough: recruit recognisable voices, pair them with game live-action performers, and hope the energy carries a script that is more interested in gags than in the source material's quieter charms. Whether that trade-off pays off is, of course, the central question. For a useful point of comparison in terms of animated family films balancing nostalgia and contemporary energy, it is worth a look at the site's take on A Goofy Movie, a film that faced its own version of that tonal balancing act.
Taking Beatrix Potter's genteel little watercolours and turning them into a wisecracking, action-scored family romp was always going to be a gamble, and Will Gluck's Peter Rabbit lands somewhere in the awkward middle.
On a purely visual level, mind, it is lovely. The CGI rabbits are beautifully clean, the whole film carries a bright, expensive sheen, and the blend of animation and live action is seamless. I did keep wondering, though, whether a straight, old-school hand-drawn take might have served Potter better than all this modern gloss; there is a warmer, simpler film hiding somewhere behind the polish.
My real trouble is the voice at the centre of it. James Corden is, to my ears, a grating screen presence at the best of times, and as Peter he is precisely the wrong flavour of smug and shrill; the character wants charm and instead gets a smirk. It is a role that called for a lighter, more mischievous touch, a Daniel Radcliffe or an Elijah Wood or a Tom Holland. Instead the film's hero spends the whole runtime mildly getting on your nerves, which for a Peter Rabbit is close to fatal.
The humans do their level best to haul it back up. Rose Byrne and Domhnall Gleeson are both far more committed than a by-the-numbers kids' film strictly demands, Gleeson in particular a long way from the chilly precision of his work in Ex Machina or Star Wars Force Awakens, gamely hurling himself at the slapstick, and even Margot Robbie turns up in the voice cast.
Their effort only carries you so far, mind. But here is the thing that rescues it: children adore this film. Mine certainly did, giggling the whole way through, and there is real credit due for that. For everyone else it is handsome, harmless and almost instantly forgettable, which makes it about as tidy a two-and-a-half-star film as you could hope to find.
Peter Rabbit (2018) sits comfortably in a particular category of studio family film: technically accomplished, commercially minded, and produced with evident care for the audience it is most directly aimed at. Gluck and his collaborators have made something that works on a specific, practical level, even if it leaves older viewers reaching for something with a bit more of Potter's original quiet wit about it. It is not a film that will age into a beloved classic in the way that, say, The Straight Story has for a rather different audience, nor does it seem to want to. The question it really answers is a simpler one: will children laugh? On that score, the evidence suggests yes, reliably and repeatedly. Sometimes that is the job, done well enough. It is just not a particularly memorable way to spend ninety-three minutes if you are old enough to remember the books.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2026-08-14
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Peter Rabbit (2018) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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