10 years since the release of Paddington, it seems everyone has seen the pro-immigration bear movie except us and successive British governments.

Paul King’s caniform classic follows a marmalade-loving bear (Ben Wishaw) from Peru to London, where he is embraced by denizens of the former British empire who can’t pronounce his name and decide to call him Paddington after the station where they found him. Good thing he didn’t arrive into Mudchute.

Writer/director Paul King serves the marmalade sandwiches with a sickly dollop of cheese, but keeps the refugee themes fresh. Paddington is met by a range of racist bear-whistles, from middle-class suspicion to outright bigotry (“Soon the whole street will be crawling with them!”), although his marmalade addiction does little to dispel tabloid stereotypes. That’s how Cocaine Bear got started.

The film’s bearnevolence is picnic-hampered by a mundane story that pieces together leftovers from Stuart Little, E.T., The Wrong Trousers and 101 Dalmations, as the bear is pursued by a taxidermist (Nicole Kidman) intent on stuffing him. This is padded out by pointless chase sequences and countless scenes where Paddington falls over, not helped by characterisation that’s more obsequious than charming.

But the picture’s warmth wins out, preserving Michael Bond’s character as a refugee icon, rather than his later incarnation as the Queen’s escort into the afterlife. It ends up a bearnign Brit flick, hardly a bear necessity but much better than the other Bond’s output over the last decade.