Peter Rabbit (dir. Will Gluck)

Imagine the scenario: beloved children's author Beatrix Potter is invited to a script meeting with top studio executives at Sony, on the possibility of a new and modern retelling of her cherished Peter Rabbit stories. Given the recent accolades bestowed upon other cinematic adaptations of children's books of late (Paddington etc), what could possibly go wrong? Here, plenty: there's enough here to make Potter turn in her grave, as the delicate and nuanced fantastical stories have been pushed aside in turn for dancing and singing rabbits, in competition with humans as daft and as devoid of interest as the infamous rodent's - and that's just the start of the problems.

A supposed British production but filmed almost entirely in Australia (and it looks like it, too), the anthropomorphize rabbit Peter Rabbit is a GGI-laden mashup as irritating and tedious as the "Crazy Frog" of yesteryear. Voiced by the immediately annoying James Corden, our story pits a group of familial rabbits led by Peter and family members Mr. Tod (Fayssal Bazzi), Flopsy (Margot Robbie), Mrs Tiggy-Winkle (Sia), Mia (Elizabeth Debicki) , Cotton Tail (Daisy Ridley) and Benjamin Bunny (Colin Moody), and there daily "mission impossible" style task of burrowing their way into a local mans garden to steal his "veggies". At first, their antagonist is Mr. McGregor Sr. (Sam Neil) - who runs his garden with an iron fist and a proud attention to detail - but soon his nephew Thomas McGregor (Domhall Gleeson) inherits the family estate, to his staggering bewilderment, and in close companionship with local neighbor Bea (Rose Byrne) (with whom the rabbits have a surrogate mother relationship with for the most incomprehensible reasons) - the drama soon becomes a tedious and tiresome exercise in overplaying your hand.

A big part of the problem in director Will Gluck's painfully self-aware animation is it's cringe-worthiness. There's hardly a second that goes by without a misguided and painfully inappropriate pop-song to accompany it's Tom and Jerry mischief, and though the cat-and-mouse exchange between McGregor and Peter Rabbit is played for laughs - it's all too progressive in it's narrative structure and too broad with it's tone to be in the slightest bit humorous. Take for instance, the lambasting cloud of derision the film received when the first marketing campaign was released - only a two minute trailer aimed at circumventing the usual cliched children's book adaptation and perhaps attempting at creating something original and magical which could reach all ages like Paul King has done so marvelously with the recent Paddington films - was met with a universal guffaw from fans and critics alike who attempted to understand why the infamous Peter Rabbit would be twerking on screen and in a parade of other feline creatures that seemed to be a direct rip-off on Animal House.

What has made Potter's stories so universal are it's niches and it's cute and delicate character studies. Rabbits that behave and dress like humans; but here, all of it seems to add to the insignificance of it all. Yes it's impressive to look at, with a lot of the modest $50 million dollar budget going toward it's visual aesthetics, but you can't help but find the plot contrivances woefully inadequate entertainment and theres little to no evidence of originality in the entire make-up of the picture. Take for instance, Paul King's magical interpretation of Michael Bond's Paddington - a film series which has recently won plaudits for it's ability to charm and to excite the hearts and minds of every generation. But for the parents, who will inevitably accompany the kids, there's only a shoe horned romantic sub-plot between Bea and Thomas which appears to only exist in Hollywood cinema to assuage the plethora of amateurish dialogue, but little else to sink your teeth into.

The "Home-Alone" style contraptions that service the greatest chunk of the plot do little to wake you up either. Not even electric fences or dynamite can stop our little grass-dwellers, and it's not long before you wonder why our titular homeowner doesn't just get a shotgun out of the shed and be done with it all. Nevertheless, the coherence of the narrative is not the least bit important to writer Rob Lieber, who co-wrote this with director Will Gluck, as it's not just the inconsistencies of the plot which can be traced back to the hackneyed writing. Gags misfire at an alarming rate, albeit with a child's sense of humor in mind, but during the screening i was in - which was a mid-day full of children - laughter was notable only by its absence, especially during the more broader moments. Instead opting for the usual slapstick fair which seems to always get a laugh or two out of the crowd - seeing Thomas fall over dramatically after being outsmarted by a 2-foot hare should be enough to get the crowd tickling, even if there riffing off the Tom and Jerry theme it tries so hard to escape from.

If there's any consolation for Sony Animation, it's light years ahead in every department from their abomination "The Emoji Movie" which still haunts the walls of the studios headquarter's - and of course Potter isn't alive to see this misguided incarnation. Famously, the author of Mary Poppins, P.L Travers was so unimpressed with Robert Stevenson's adaptation of her famous book with his spellbinding 1964 feature, she died with her disdain still a part of the public consciousness. It's doubtful Potter would have ever enjoyed seeing her most prized buck prance around a cinema screen with "The Proclaimers" in the background - because, who would?

Rating 1/5.