The recently married Thomas (Domhnall Gleeson) and Bea (Rose Byrne) are being courted by publisher Nigel Basil-Jones (David Oyelowo) for sequels to Bea’s successful story of Peter Rabbit. Whilst Peter (James Cordon) is a little upset with the label of “trouble maker” and falls in with a thief who claims to be an old friend of his father. 

I recall the original Peter Rabbit being good family fun albeit with a slightly irritating choice of lead as Peter. This sequel is a bit of an uneventful mess though. There are two disparate storylines that struggle to mesh themes, scattershot jokes that mostly miss and an incredibly surreal “meta” quality to a lot of the jokes. 

The meta jokes mostly take swipes at criticisms of the original film including the fact that it was made by Americans and not in the spirit of the original source material and the fact that James Cordon’s voice is annoying. But it even takes time to take a swipe at its family friendly moral and its own ending before anyone else can. All of which just felt a little odd. 

The best of the scattershot jokes belong to a Fox newly interested in keeping fit and the cockerel obsessed with calling in the sun each day. 

At 93 minutes it still feels a little aimless and meandering whilst wasting the likes of Margot Robbie, Elizabeth Debicki and Lennie James in the voice cast.