93 min | PG | June 11, 2021 | Columbia Pictures
Peter Rabbit runs off to the big city and falls in with a gang of streetwise animals. Back home, a slick publisher wants to turn Bea’s gentle stories into a global brand. The movie about selling out is itself the merchandise.
Peter Rabbit lives in the country with Bea and Thomas McGregor, now married and running a farm. Bea’s storybooks catch the eye of a publisher named Nigel Basil-Jones, who wants to expand the property into a sprawling franchise. Peter, tired of being typecast as the bad rabbit, flees to the city and falls in with a gang led by Barnabas. The film is openly about commercialization, sequels, and the machinery that turns a small story into a product line. Will Gluck builds the whole movie around jokes about cynical franchise-building. The catch is that the movie is the franchise-building.
James Corden voices Peter with manic energy and a constant stream of asides aimed straight at the audience. Rose Byrne plays Bea as the warm center who watches her own work get repackaged into something louder. Domhnall Gleeson plays Thomas McGregor with twitchy physical comedy, a man still recovering from his war with rabbits. David Oyelowo voices Nigel Basil-Jones with smooth corporate menace, a publisher who talks in market segments and brand extensions. Margot Robbie and Elizabeth Debicki voice Flopsy and Mopsy as a deadpan double act. Lennie James voices Barnabas, the old rabbit who lures Peter into a fruit-market heist.
Gluck directs and shares the script with Patrick Burleigh. The production composites CG animals into real English exteriors and city streets. The animators match the rabbits’ fur lighting to the on-set sun so the creatures sit inside the frame instead of floating on top of it. The editing cuts fast and lands on every gag, cross-cutting between Peter’s urban caper and the McGregors’ publishing negotiation. The sound design stacks slapstick foley on top of the chases until the noise becomes the joke. The meta lines get delivered directly down the lens, daring you to notice the formula.
The film knows exactly what it is and announces it out loud. It names its own cynicism about merchandising and sequels, then runs the same playbook in the next scene. The self-awareness works as a defense mechanism. Pointing at the formula does not exempt you from following it. The result entertains small children and leaves everyone else with a clever shrug.