Potter’s Peter Rabbit reboot poorly plotted

Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki), Flopsy (Margot Robbie), Benjamin, Bea (Rose Byrne), Peter Rabbit (James Corden) and Cottontail (Daisy Ridley) in Peter Rabbit. the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; and director Rob Gluck, whose career has had its lows (2009’s Fired Up!) and highs (2010’s Easy A). Peter Rabbit lies between these extremes; it’s just a hop, a skip and a jump — and several more hops — away from greatness.

Beatrix Potter also gets a credit, having written the original Tale of Peter Rabbit in the early 1900s. She died in 1943, a few years after refusing to allow Walt Disney to make an animated film out of her books. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake; Disney would never have included Peter’s nemesis, Mr. McGregor, getting repeatedly electrocuted, smacked with rakes or caught in foot traps.

That’s Young Mr. McGregor, by the way, set up as a love interest for Potter herself (Rose Byrne) after the narrative blithely does away with Old Mr. McGregor. Peter Rabbit’s mother has also been mysteriously excised, leaving Peter (voiced by James Corden) and his three sisters as the main lagomorphic (i.e., rabbity) characters.

Domhnall Gleeson does a decent job in the thankless role of a neurotic Londoner who inherits his great-uncle’s rural cottage in Windermere, only to find it overrun with a variety of wild vermin, all of whom are casually tolerated by neighbour Bea. (Of course they are; she doesn’t have a vegetable garden for them to plunder, does she?)

He takes to ever more extreme measures to rid himself of the rabbits, to the point where even Wile E. Coyote might say to him: “Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?” Meanwhile, Peter and friends retaliate in kind, and with a bizarre mix of naturalistic movements (when they run they look like rabbits) and more human qualities, such as opposable thumbs, dance moves and the ability break the fourth wall.

It all adds up to a uneven mess, culminating in the scene in which Peter travels to London by train to set things right. The trip from Windermere terminates at Euston Station, but I couldn’t help but think of nearby Paddington. It’s a much better destination for kids, their parents and talking animals alike.