‘Postman Pat’ doesn’t quite deliver

Published Oct 31, 2014

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POSTMAN PAT: THE MOVIE 3D

DIRECTOR: Mike Disa

VOICE CAST: Simon Mangan, Jim Broadbent, Rupert Grint, Susan Duerden, Robin Atkin Downes, Peter Woodward

CLASSIFICATION: PG

RUNNING TIME: 88 minutes

RATING: ***

 

 

 

POSTMAN Pat the movie is almost as cute as the tv series, though stretching it to 90 minutes stretches your capacity to sit through it.

Everyone from the series is here, from Pat’s best friend Ben to, of course, Jess the black-and-white cat. There are also some new characters, like Simon Cowbell (Robin Atkin Downes), the host of You’re the One, a reality TV series in search of a new popstar.

Pat (voiced by Simon Mangan) enters the competition because he knows his wife Sara (Duerden) would love a trip to Italy.

Postman Pat has always been painted as a character who can solve any problem, so it should not surprise that, when he bursts out in song for the competition, he nails it, thanks to Ronan Keating.

However, when he suddenly makes it in the big time, everyone wants a piece of him and he can’t keep up with the postal deliveries. So, of course, what does new boss boss, Edwin Carbunkle (Woodward), do? Bring in a robot to deliver the mail.

Cue the mayhem and angry villagers and suddenly it all goes a bit darkly Dr Who.

In trying to contemporise the storyline and stretch it across an hour-and-a-half, the scriptwriters throw a whole lot of irony at the screen, but that’s going to be lost on the average four-year-old, who, let’s face it, is the audience for Postman Pat.

There are some clever jokes poking fun at the film itself as well as at celebrity culture and the image of Jim Broadbent’s character, seated on the floor, playing with a Postman Pat action figure while that jingle plays, is precious.

But, the adults are not the audience here and older children will be bored, while very small ones may find the “robots gone dark and crazy” part a bit too scary.

The overall message seems to be about the folly of trying to improve on things that already work just fine, and you have to wonder if the filmmakers aren’t poking fun at their own selves for switching to digital.

While the cgi is totally serviceable, it is nowhere near as magical as the original stop- motion was.

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