YMMV / Peter Rabbit

The TV Show

• Awesome Music:
  • "Spring Has Sprung", which was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Music and Lyrics.
  • The show's instrumental cues are lively and fun, well fitting for the pace of the show.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The mother's day episode which focuses on Peter thinking of something special for his mother.
  • Peter defending his younger sister Cottontail from a shrew.
• Nightmare Fuel: Many of the things the villains are willing to do are downright heinous. At one point, Old Brown attempts to crush the main cast alive under a table. It's true that he was a predator and, at that point, he was rightfully pissed off at Nutkin, but that's going a little far. Also, at least twice characters have been seen actually ending up in Mr. Tod's cookpot.
• Tear Jerker: In one episode, a shrew making Cottontail cry. This pisses Peter off as a result and he even yells at the shrew of how mean he is.

The Film

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The film took a classic book character and transformed him into an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist. It also rebooted the original plot and replaced what Beatrix Potter put to make the character lovable with cheap pop culture gags. Somehow it managed to avoid being a flop, but it's still marred by the controversy surrounding a scene where the Designated Villain is deliberately assaulted with stuff he is deathly allergic to by the titular character.
• Base-Breaking Character: James Corden as Peter. While it is generally agreed that the other characters outshine the titular "hero", viewers are split into three camps over whether he's surprisingly decent, simply a minor inconvenience to the film, or completely ruins it.
• Cliché Storm: The film sacrifices the unique elements of Potter's beloved stories in favour of copying-and-pasting the plots of Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs and virtually every other children's Live-Action Adaptation with a low score on Rotten Tomatoes. The overall premise seems derivative of Furry Vengeance, as well.
• Designated Hero: Peter and the animals, who trash Mr. McGregor's house with a wild party as opposed to occasionally nipping some vegetables from his gardens as in the books. Then there's the fact that they threw said party to celebrate the death of Mr. McGregor. Later on, they repeatedly attempt to murder his nephew Thomas, doing such terrible things like:
  • Lacing his bedroom with animal traps and rakes.
  • Electrifying the doors so he leaves through the roof, then electrifying the roof.
  • Intentionally exploiting Thomas McGregor's allergy to blackberries to pelt him with the berries until one lands in his mouth and nearly causes him to die from anaphylactic shock. Infamously, this scene sparked outrage from parents who had children with food allergies, and some went so far as to consider the scene a Moral Event Horizon for Peter in particular.
    Robbie Collen: It is a horrible scene – not because allergies are comedically untouchable, but because it makes Peter an irredeemably nasty piece of work.
  • Peter is probably an intentional example, since after the berry scene there's a poignant moment of Thomas ranting at Peter about he's not a bad person and that what Peter is doing to him is pushing him to these extremes, and after Bea breaks up with Thomas, Peter is stricken with guilt when she says that Thomas was just a jerk to Peter and that Peter had done nothing at all to provoke him, something Peter is aware is not true.
• Designated Villain: Thomas McGregor, presented in the trailers as the supposed villain, just wants to protect his garden from selfish animals that hoard everything they want and partied when the last homeowner died, no less. In the actual movie, this is possibly an intentional case of the trope, since he is presented as a decent person who just has severe anger issues, with Peter ultimately cast as in the wrong for provoking him needlessly.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Has one with fans of the Paddington Bear movies. Both films are adaptations of beloved British children's books starring talking animals, and are combined CGI/Live-Action films. While the Paddington movies are praised for being faithful to the books and being delightful and sincere films, this movie is reviled for doing the exact opposite with the source material.
  • A minor one spurred with fans of the Peter Rabbit CGI series. While both have similar deviations from the source material (i.e. making Peter a trickster and adding slapstick), the show is still closer in spirit to the books and didn't rely on dated pop-culture references.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A good portion of people, especially Star Wars fans, are only interested in the film (especially one as seemingly hated as this one) because Daisy Ridley (and to a lesser extent, Domhnall Gleeson) is in it. Although Daisy Ridley's character of Cottontail Rabbit was recast for The Runaway, Domhnall Gleeson still remained, now joined by David Oyelowo (the voice of Agent Kallus), keeping some incentive among Star Wars fans to watch the sequel.
• Memetic Mutation: The fact that the film's main villain, Thomas McGregor, is played by Domhnall Gleeson has sparked a lot of jokes that the movie's plot is about General Hux fighting rabbits. The fact that, when playing McGregor, Gleeson uses the same ridiculous accent that he used for Hux isn't helping matters.
• Mis-blamed: Due to the first trailer coming out two months after The Emoji Movie was released, many people began to pin the blame on Sony Pictures Animation despite the fact that Sony Pictures only released Peter Rabbit under the SPA name for marketing purposes similarly to Goosebumps (2015), which got a sequel the same year and received the same marketing treatment.^note In fact, Peter Rabbit wasn't mentioned at all on SPA's social media pages, nor was a trailer released on their YouTube alongside the main Sony Pictures account. Tellingly, the marketing for Peter Rabbit 2: The Runway completely dropped the SPA branding altogether, though coming out well after that division's reputation started to improve considerably didn't help matters either.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The liberties taken with the source material, the film being made by Sony Pictures, and the fact that it would be released under their Sony Pictures Animation banner^note SPA otherwise had no involvement whatsoever were already controversial with fans of Beatrix Potter's stories, but the film was threatened to be boycotted by viewers who have accused the film of glorifying food allergy bullying.
• Questionable Casting: James Corden as Peter; it's not entirely clear what age Peter is supposed to be in the film^note Peter is a child in "Peter Rabbit" and "Benjamin Bunny" but is an adult rabbit in "The Flopsy Rabbits" and "Mr. Todd", but Corden's voice is extremely jarring regardless of it, mainly because his patronizing and awkward delivery sounds as he does when he's hosting The Late Late Show, rather than actually acting. While the other actors put in at least some effort, Corden's performance feels particularly phoned-in and insincere. The fact that he voiced Hi-5 in the reviled The Emoji Movie hasn't helped.
• Rooting for the Empire: Given how the animals come off as entitled jerks for humiliating Thomas McGregor, trashing his house, and raiding his garden after he'd done very little to deserve it, and since Domhnall Gleeson largely carries the film with his Character Development and slapstick, many viewers want him to exterminate the vermin with extreme prejudice.
• So Okay, It's Average:
  • Perhaps the movie wouldn't be so polarizing if it wasn't attached to a franchise that's such a Sacred Cow. If you replaced every Beatrix Potter character with Suspiciously Similar Substitutes, then it seems only slightly better.
  • Reviews of the film seem to fall into this category, with the general consensus being that while the film is not without its bright spots, such as the visual effects and the majority of the cast, it is ultimately let down by an unoriginal story, a pointless Setting Update with all that entails and an unlikable lead character with a weak performance by Corden. The film currently sits at a 64% on Rotten Tomatoes from 135 reviews, as of November 4, 2018.
• Tainted by the Preview: The first trailer was torn apart for its focus on cheap comedy and showing how significantly the film deviated from its beloved source material, with quite a few people saying that the film was going to be the next Emoji Movie.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Die-hard fans were not pleased by how many changes there were from Beatrix's tales; they've gone from beloved Beast Fables to low-brow comedy. This was even lampshaded on the Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus for the film:
  Peter Rabbit updates Beatrix Potter's classic characters with colorfully agreeable results that should entertain younger viewers while admittedly risking the wrath of purists.^note Despite the blurb, the movie stands at a respectable 64%, although a much lower 38% when just factoring in the site's "Top Critics"
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Rose Byrne has repeatedly proven her acting chops when it comes to comedy, such as Bridesmaids and Neighbors (2014), but as Bea she's not really given anything to do other than be an additional prize for Peter and Thomas to fight over. The film is also strangely vague about whether she's supposed to be Beatrix Potter, causing speculation that the film was originally set when the books were written and made this clear, and they forgot to take it all out when it was moved to the present.
  • Many reviews also note that, while Peter's sisters earn quite a few laughs, with most finding them far more engaging and amusing than Peter himself (though James Corden's performance doesn't help the latter's case) they are ultimately sidelined in focus and put their talented actresses to waste.
  • Sam Neill as Old Man McGregor, in addition to being funny, also comes off as a truly intimidating and villainous presence, which could have been used to great effect as a foil to his Designated Villain nephew. Instead, he dies of a heart attack toward the start of the movie, right before Thomas is introduced.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: This happened even before the movie was officially released - since the trailers depict Thomas McGregor doing nothing wrong but having the gall to move into a house, romancing a woman Peter doesn't want romanced, and be related to a man he didn't even personally know. It makes the animals look like absolute jerks, especially since the trailers depicted the animals laughing at McGregor's expense.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Bea particularly gets hit by this trope. She doesn't let McGregor truly air his grievances and doesn't even seem to care that much about how much the animals are terrorizing him.
  • All the animals asides from Peter and Benjamin. With Peter, it's actually addressed in the movie that his greedy selfishness and behavior toward Thomas McGregor was unacceptable and something that he has to make amends for, making him a case of intentionally unsympathetic. And Benjamin, as the voice of reason, doesn't really do anything wrong unless he's forced into it. But every other animal from Peter's sisters all the way down to the pig never seem to learn anything or show any remorse for their greedy, entitled Jerkass behavior.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: While the over-all plot leaves much to be desired, the special effects are top-notch. The animals look realistic without falling into the creepy category.
• Win Back the Crowd: Despite the vocal outcry over the trailers and tone, and mixed critical consensus, word-of-mouth propelled the movie to a very profitable success. Opening in the same window as Black Panther (2018), it debuted to a respectable $25 million then had terrific multiplier legs to a final domestic total of $115 million and a worldwide take of $351 million off a modest $50 million budget.

The Sequel

• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: A lot of critics and audiences have said that the sequel is a little better than the original film because of the amount of self-awareness and the characters being more likeable.