Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway’ on VOD, A Repetitive Second Go-Round With the Mischievous Bunny and His Pals

At last, the PRCU resumes with Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, now on VOD more than a year after pandemic delays scuttled it from its Easterish 2020 release. The movie brings back the ever-flustered Domnhall Gleeson and the ever-glowing Rose Byrne as the human characters, and James Corden, Margot Robbie, etc. as the voice talent behind the weirdly photo-realistic animated bunnies, for a new hopefully not too overly manic, not too over-manneredly British, adventure. Are we fired up for this, or will we just be very painfully reminded that we’re not eight years old?

PETER RABBIT 2: THE RUNAWAY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We pick up pretty much where 2018’s Peter Rabbit left off. Bea (Byrne) and Thomas (Gleeson) are getting married with rabbits in jackets and pigs in turtlenecks, etc., in attendance, when suddenly Peter Rabbit (voice of Corden), ever the poop-stirrer, is tRiGgErEd and wallops the groom in the face, inspiring mayhem. BUT ALAS, it’s only the bunny’s malevolent daydream and none of it happened. Then, before you know it, we’re just SMOTHERED with wokeness when the female officiant says, “You may kiss the groom.” Gasp. Woke woke woke. Tradition has been subverted. Don’t laugh, because we’re obviously all gonna die in flames.

Anyway, since the last movie, Bea has written and illustrated a book about Peter. She and Thomas print and bind the books in their home and sell them in his quaint little toy shoppe. Thomas still has his exquisite garden and tends to it by occasionally eating the dirt to determine its moisture content, so between this and Nicolas Cage in Pig, you’ll have quite the dirt-eating double feature. The old-timey ding-a-ling phone rings and it’s a big-time publisher that wants to bring Bea’s provincial little story about goofy British rabbits to the masses. So they load Peter and Flopsy (Robbie), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki), Cottontail (Aimee Horne) and Benjamin (Colin Moody) into Thomas’ vintage Land Rover and motor into Gloucester for a meeting, and the city setting assures us the movie is indeed set in the modern day, and not 1951.

Nigel Basil-Jones (David Oyelowo) is the man with the budget to transform Peter’s quaint exploits into a series of raucous adventures with spinoff movies, high-fructose snacks and tie-in toys. Being an open-minded sort, Bea is receptive to the idea, especially after Nigel gives her a fancy convertible, which really revs up Thomas’ fluster zones.Wait, isn’t this movie about the rabbit? Yes — Peter’s arc just wasn’t that interesting until the part of the movie where Nigel wants to market him as a “bad seed.” That, coupled with his ongoing prickly rivalry with Thomas, inspires Peter to pursue his perceived destiny as a troublemaker. He wanders the Gloucester streets to the tune of Green Day’s “I Walk Alone” until he meets Barnabas (Lennie James), a grizzled bunny who knows all the ins and outs of pilfering vegetables from vendors and homes. Barnabas leads a little gang of thieves and convinces Peter that he’s one of them. But is he? Is he REALLY a rotten apple? And do we really care? Maybe a little, but it’s still kind of a tough ask.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Peter Rabbit 2 is Babe meets Miss Potter and (sigh) Ocean’s 11 run through a post-Paddington whimsical-charm filter that doesn’t quite take.

Performance Worth Watching: Here’s some more fuel for the Rose Byrne Makes Everything Better argument, although it’s pretty clear that the movie doesn’t fully appreciate her.

Memorable Dialogue: Peter’s moment of great self-awareness: “It’s a gift — terrible at foreign languages, great at cartoon violence.”

Sex and Skin: This movie defies all stereotypes about rabbits and their sexual voracity by portraying zero incidences of such.

Our Take: I remain confused as to whether there’s a hard and fast rule about whether the humans in these movies can hear the rabbits speak, or if the rabbits speak a different language that just sounds like English to the audience, or if they just speak out of earshot of the humans, or what. I think it depends on whether the plot needs a human to hear what a rabbit says in a specific moment. Perhaps we really shouldn’t be concerned about such things when a movie exists to funnel physical comedy and mooshy sentiment into the faces of children, and repeat many of the same jokes from the first movie. It really is no more complicated than that. Yet as a viewer, I feel like I have no firm narrative ground to stand on, or anything more interesting to talk about in this review.

Actually, that’s a lie. There are enough self-aware moments in Peter Rabbit 2 — including moments when the rabbits address the apparent language barrier between them and the humans — to load a modest landfill with nudge-winks. Both Byrne and a rabbit get moments in which they look directly at the camera and prompt us to laugh; will you submit to their will? There’s also a bit in which publishers pooh-pooh Bea’s proposed ending to a story and replace it with the type of ludicrous action-packed fodder that soon becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the movie, a wholly intentional development that truly solidifies the film’s pervasive commentary on the struggle between artistic integrity and commercialism. And that, of course, is precisely why we watch movies in which anthropomorphic cartoon rabbits participate in ceaseless slapstick. Unless I’m wrong. Am I wrong? I could be wrong.

Our Call: I’m wrong. Peter Rabbit 2 is not about anything except hopefully entertaining eight-year-olds. If you resemble one, STREAM IT. Otherwise, SKIP IT, for its appeal is limited.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway