Revisiting Children’s Classics

Paddington 2, directed by Paul King, written by Paul King and Simon Farnaby, 2018.

Mary Poppins Returns, directed by Rob Marshall, written by David Magee, 2018.

THE FILMS that competed for end-of-year awards were a pallid crop that, typically, didn’t represent the best work to come out of either Hollywood or Europe in 2018. That work is often hidden around the margins, but last year some of it could also be found along the mainstream, in undervalued pictures made for popular audiences, including young moviegoers—and some of them were culled from children’s classics that have never been off the shelves. Using a muted palette, Andy Serkis made a startling, unsettling version of the oft-filmed Rudyard Kipling collection The Jungle Book. A.A. Milne’s tales of Winnie the Pooh returned to us via Marc Forster’s Christopher Robin, in which the titular character, now a World War II veteran (played by Ewan McGregor), is reawakened by a visit from the woodland creatures of his childhood. Most surprising was a pair of sequels: Paddington 2, by Paul King, who released Paddington in 2015; and Mary Poppins Returns, Rob Marshall’s follow-up, more than half a century on, to the most beloved of all Disney musicals. Both films are revelations that refurbish and reimagine their source materials.

KING’S FIRST film, co-written with Hamish McColl, is an adaptation of Michael Bond’s initial children’s book, (1958), updated to the present day. Paddington is still a talking bear from “darkest Peru” whose Aunt Lucy encourages him to take a trip to London,