'Sex references' dropped in rating of Paddington bear film

The British Board of Film Classification’s (BBFC) advisory for the movie, based on books that Michael Bond began writing in the late 1950s, now advises that “Paddington”, which is rated PG, or Parental Guidance, has scenes that contain “dangerous behavior, mild threat, innuendo, infrequent mild bad language”.

“When the (original description) as published on the BBFC website the distributor requested a reconsideration,” the advisory board said in a statement.

The change came after reports that Bond, creator of the series about a bear who comes to London from Peru and is adopted by a British family, was “totally amazed” by the BBFC’s description of the film.

“I cannot imagine what the sex references are,” Bond was reported as saying in The Times newspaper. “It doesn’t enter into it with the books, certainly.”

Actor Hugh Bonneville, a “Downton Abbey” star who plays the father of the family that adopts Paddington, told the BBC he thought it was “hilarious” that the classification agency had found sexual references in a scene in which he is disguised as a cleaning woman and a security guard flirts with him. -Reuters