What does it take to imagine a world of
well-dressed, talking rabbits? In its best moments, Miss Potter suggests it might take a touch of madness. In this painfully polite movie biography of British children’s author Beatrix Potter – who wrote and illustrated 1902’s “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” – our heroine (Renee Zellweger) refers to the friendly little animals in her drawings as
“my friends” and even, on occasion, catches them moving around on the page. Director Chris Noonan (Babe) only adds a few of these surreal flourishes, which is too bad. More of
them might have made his movie as playful as his subject’s little books.
