In the rabbit’s clothes – “Peter Rabbit, the movie” (2018)

Squir­rels, mice, a chubby kit­ten, a duck with a bon­net, a hedge­hog wash­ing the laun­dry, or rab­bits in clothes – these are some of the her­oes that de­pict the en­chant­ing world of Be­at­rix Pot­ter. The tiny creatures por­trayed by Be­at­rix Pot­ter in her tales seem to be some of the children’s fa­vour­ite char­ac­ters even nowadays, and they were the sub­ject of sev­eral ad­apt­a­tions, in­clud­ing car­toons, pup­pet shows, films, or even bal­let ad­apt­a­tion per­formed by the Royal Ballet.

Be­at­rix Potter’s first story where the char­ac­ters dis­played an­thro­po­morphic ele­ments was The Tale of Peter Rab­bit, pub­lished in 1902. Peter was a naughty little bunny that dis­obeyed his mother’s re­quest and got in trouble be­cause of that. The simple prose and hu­mor­ous tone of the nar­rat­ive, com­bined with del­ic­ate wa­ter­col­our il­lus­tra­tions, have made this story one of the best­selling chil­dren’s lit­er­at­ure books, greatly en­joyed by both chil­dren and parents. 

Peter’s story seems to be Potter’s most cher­ished tale, not only be­cause of the beau­ti­ful writ­ing and il­lus­tra­tions, but also be­cause of the wit and naugh­ti­ness of the char­ac­ter. Dis­obey­ing his mother, Peter went to Mr McGregor’s garden – the same place where Peter’s father had had an “ac­ci­dent” and had ended up in a pie – to eat some ve­get­ables, and even­tu­ally, he suffered the con­sequences of be­ing al­most caught by Mr McGregor. 

It is this naugh­ti­ness of the char­ac­ter that has in­spired the re­cent film ad­apt­a­tion of Potter’s stor­ies. Peter Rab­bit is an an­im­a­tion, ad­ven­ture, and com­edy film based on Be­at­rix Pot­ter ’s clas­sical story and dir­ec­ted by Will Gluck. The Sonny Pic­tures an­im­a­tion film was re­leased on Feb­ru­ary 9th 2018 in the USA and won sev­eral awards for Best Pro­duc­tion Design and Best Visual Ef­fects or An­im­a­tion thanks to the vari­ous tech­niques and spe­cial ef­fects used to an­im­ate the an­im­als’ char­ac­ters and made them in­ter­act with hu­man actors.

The film tells the story of Peter (voiced by James Corden) along with his sib­lings Flopsy, Mopsy and Cot­ton­tail (voiced by Mar­got Rob­bie, Eliza­beth Debicki and Daisy Rid­ley), and his cousin Ben­jamin Bunny (voice by Colin Moody) who sneaked into Mr Mc­Gregor’ garden to steal and eat ve­get­ables. As Mr Mc­Gregor died, Peter and his friends thought that they had de­feated him, but they found out that a new Mc­Gregor ap­peared. Mr McGregor’s grand-nephew, Thomas (Dom­h­nall Gleeson) in­her­ited the house and garden, and also be­came in­ter­ested in his neigh­bour Bea (Rose Byrne) who loved the rab­bits. Bea’s char­ac­ter re­minds us of Be­at­rix Pot­ter in many ways, as she is noth­ing but a new vari­ant of Mrs Pot­ter (both names with B). Both wo­men loved an­im­als, es­pe­cially rab­bits, and both of them had a pas­sion for paint­ing. Like the old Mr Mc­Gregor, Thomas did not like ro­dents and tried to get rid of them by us­ing an­imal traps, elec­tric se­cur­ity devices, or even ex­plos­ives. There­fore, a whole con­flict-game between Thomas and Peter arises, caus­ing many funny mo­ments that in many in­stances re­mind us of the movie Home Alone.

At the same time, since the new story takes place at the present day, the gentle tone of the clas­sic tale has been re­placed by a more dy­namic and funny tone, as be­fits con­tem­por­ary times. There are sev­eral pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences such as jokes and slap­stick, scattered in the char­ac­ters’ speech or even the soundtrack used through­out the film, that makes the story of Peter Rab­bit fit for mod­ern times. This new ad­apt­a­tion of Peter Rabbit’s char­ac­ter seems to be dif­fer­ent in many ways from the ori­ginal one. Rest­less, stub­born, mis­chiev­ous, whimsy, and yet funny and like­able — these would be the ele­ments that could de­scribe the new Peter. The mod­ern an­im­a­tion of the well-known bunny re­minds us of a re­bel­li­ous child who is ready for new ex­per­i­ences that might be fraught with danger. 

Get­ting into trouble and play­ing pranks while teas­ing Thomas, Peter’s char­ac­ter caught at­ten­tion of a part of the public’s that ap­par­ently did not en­joy this so much. The film presents a scene where Peter, to­gether with his other an­imal friends, at­tacked Thomas Mc­Gregor with black­ber­ries, fruits to which he was al­ler­gic, in the hope that he might face an ana­phylactic shock and lose the batttle. Be­cause of this scene, the film was con­sidered to be bul­ly­ing for those who suf­fer from food al­lergy. There­fore, there was a boy­cott of the con­tro­ver­sial food al­lergy scene based on the reason that the film “mocks the ser­i­ous­ness of the al­ler­gic dis­ease and is heart­break­ingly dis­respect­ful to the fam­il­ies of those that have lost loved ones to ana­phyl­axis” (Stol­worthy, “Peter Rab­bit film.”). On the other hand, the scene in ques­tion re­minds us of Tom and Jerry’s knock­ing-off-game, when each of them, either Tom (Thomas) or Jerry (the bun­nies), tried to de­feat the other one by ex­ploit­ing the opponent’s weak­ness as a form of self-de­fense. There­fore, say­ing that the film de­picts acts of bul­ly­ing or vi­ol­ence might im­ply the con­clu­sion that films like this one, or car­toons such as Tom and Jerry, would not be not suit­able for chil­dren due to their vi­ol­ent con­tent. Yet, vi­ol­ence like this, whether un­canny or not, is still loved by chil­dren, an abounds in nu­mer­ous car­toons (even more so in the past) that used to have only a single aim: to amuse the public.

At the same time, some crit­ics did not praise the re­cent ad­apt­a­tion of Peter Rab­bit, be­cause the story res­ul­ted in some­thing dif­fer­ent from the ori­ginal tale writ­ten by Be­at­rix Pot­ter. In a Guard­ian art­icle, Mat­thew Den­nison, Be­at­rix Pot­ter’s bio­grapher, sug­ges­ted that the au­thor would not have en­joyed the new vari­ant of Peter’s char­ac­ter, since Mrs Pot­ter “was not ex­actly pos­sess­ive, but she had a very clear idea in her head of how the books should be. They came about through really close, care­ful work. There was noth­ing ac­ci­dental or spon­tan­eous about them. And she was a bit beady – she was tough with her pub­lish­ers on things like how much white space or text there was. Every single de­tail she really thought about.” (qtd. in Flood, “Be­at­rix Potter.”)

Nev­er­the­less, whether or not the re­cent story stands up to the ori­ginal, whether or not it con­tains epis­odes of bul­ly­ing, the film is still ap­peal­ing to both chil­dren and adults. It is this very naugh­ti­ness and the re­bel­li­ous­ness of the prot­ag­on­ist – that al­ways make him cross bor­ders in the search for ad­ven­ture – that might be the reas­ons why this film ad­apt­a­tion is so ad­ored by chil­dren. By de­pict­ing these fea­tures of the char­ac­ter, along with the funny mo­ments, the movie tags Peter as a “cool” guy in the eyes of the chil­dren, a trait that most of them de­sired to ac­quire. How­ever, since the an­im­a­tion abounds in jokes and clumsy ac­tions that pro­voke laughter, most of the par­ents rel­ish the film to­gether with their chil­dren. There­fore, not only are chil­dren en­chanted by the latest ad­apt­a­tion, but par­ents might en­joy it as well, which makes Peter Rab­bit a great fam­ily film.

Bibliography

Stol­worthy, Jacob. “Peter Rab­bit film fa­cing boy­cott over con­tro­ver­sial ‘food al­lergy bul­ly­ing’ scene”. In­de­pend­ent. Feb­ru­ary 11, 2018. Ac­cessed on Decem­ber 5, 2019. https://​www​.in​de​pend​ent​.co​.uk/​a​r​t​s​-​e​n​t​e​r​t​a​i​n​m​e​n​t​/​f​i​l​m​s​/​n​e​w​s​/​p​e​t​e​r​-​r​a​b​b​i​t​-​b​o​y​c​o​t​t​-​f​o​o​d​-​a​l​l​e​r​g​y​-​b​u​l​l​y​i​n​g​-​p​e​t​i​t​i​o​n​-​s​o​n​y​-​p​i​c​t​u​r​e​s​-​j​a​m​e​s​-​c​o​r​d​e​n​-​a​8​2​0​5​4​0​6.html.

Flood, Al­ison. “Be­at­rix Pot­ter would not have liked Peter Rab­bit film – bio­grapher”. The Guard­ian. March 9, 2018. Ac­cessed on Decem­ber 4, 2019. https://​www​.the​guard​ian​.com/​b​o​o​k​s​/​2​0​1​8​/​m​a​r​/​0​9​/​b​e​a​t​r​i​x​-​p​o​t​t​e​r​-​w​o​u​l​d​-​n​o​t​-​h​a​v​e​-​l​i​k​e​d​-​p​e​t​e​r​-​r​a​b​b​i​t​-​f​i​l​m​-​b​i​o​g​r​a​p​h​e​r​-​j​a​m​e​s​-​corden.

“Peter Rab­bit (2018)”. IMDb. Ac­cessed on Decem­ber 3, 2019. https://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​5​1​1​7​6​7​0​/​?​r​e​f​_​=​t​t​p​l​_pl_tt.

“Peter Rab­bit (2018)”. Rot­ten To­ma­toes. Ac­cessed on Decem­ber 3, 2019. https://​www​.rot​ten​to​ma​toes​.com/​m​/​p​e​t​e​r​_​r​a​b​b​i​t_2018.

Mari­ana Oros