First directing job for Chris Noonan in the eleven years since Babe, an innocuous biopic on the author and illustrator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, not to mention proto-feminist and proto-environmentalist, who braved the disparagement of gray-souled publishers ("Bunnies in jackets with brass buttons? However do you imagine such things?"), as well as the disparagement of her meddling matchmaking mother, to produce her first book at the spinsterly age of thirty-two. The role encourages Renée Zellweger to behave a bit like a smug chipmunk sitting on the private knowledge of a secret stash of acorns. Or rather, since the actress served also as an executive producer, you could say she encouraged herself to behave like that. The vindication of history, while removing any tension from the proceedings, encourages the viewer to mirror the same smirk. Ewan McGregor is very game and quite charming as the damp-behind-the-ears publisher who gives her her big break and also provides hope (plus the merest wisp of tension) of a matrimonial Happily Ever After. And Bill Paterson, as the Potter paterfamilias, models a prodigious set of muttonchops. The touches of animation which bring the drawings of Beatrix Potter to life are too few to have been worth the bother, but not too few to imply dissatisfaction with, if not further disparagement of, those drawings. Must we regard her as a proto-animator, too? With Emily Watson and Barbara Flynn. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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