The plot: His many adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood now far in his past, the now-grown-up Christopher Robin (Ewen McGregor) spends his days overworked at a luggage company. However, when his old friend Winnie The Pooh (Jim Cummings) shows up, Christopher finds himself flung right back into his days as a child and how much he has changed since then. But maybe he hasn't changed that much after all.
McGregor does a capital job as the older title
character, easing very nicely from the work-crazed adult into the more
wide-eyed innocence of his youth without missing a beat. As the flesh-and-blood
anchor for a lot of the film’s harder-hitting moments, he fits into the film’s
mood precisely as needed. Hayley Atwell as his wife is… I kinda hate having to write
this, since I was pretty sure that we were past this brand of
faux-characterisation, but she doesn’t manage to rise beyond the “honey, you
work too much” tedium of her character. Bronte Carmichael as Christopher’s daughter
ends up hitting a lot of the film’s bigger points in regards to the importance
of play, and her scenes opposite the animated characters hit as strong a chord
as her father manages, further selling the film’s emotional core. Oh, and Mark
Gatiss shows up to be the epitome of snootiness as Christopher’s boss, making
for a nicely watchable-for-the-hateful-foppishness performance.
And now, the voice cast, where the real magic happens. Veteran voice actor Jim Cummings, who you can easily find by throwing a dart into a collection of animated films and likely finding three of his efforts, voices not only Winnie the Pooh but also Tigger. His portrayal of Tigger hits all the energetic beats that the character requires, but his performance of everyone’s favourite bear (possibly second favourite, now that Paddington is in the mainstream)… this is something else. He’s been portraying this character on-and-off since the late 80’s, and that kind of experience definitely shows in how instantly warming his delivery is here. Whether he’s talking child-friendly philosophising on what “nothing” truly is or trying to remember if he ate all the honey, it’s the kind of voice that will make you fight the urge to make a D’aww! face for the entirety of his screen time. Brad Garrett’s iconic baritone gives Eeyore all the hilariously depressing edge his dialogue needs, Nick Mohammed as Piglet also fits the character quite nicely, and aside from names like Peter Capaldi and Toby Jones being all kinds of welcome in these parts, it’s kind of difficult to highlight them out of fear that it would distract from the apex of adorable that is Cummings as Pooh.
Then again, I also shouldn’t oversell his performance in
getting that across; the visuals are a big part of that effect. Now, the film
itself doesn’t actually stand out that much as far as aesthetic, since it’s
shot with the same slightly-muted colour palette as an awful lot of movies
nowadays. The real magic, however, comes out of the effects work courtesy of
Method/Iloura and Framestore. Not since Where The Wild Things Are has there
been a family film with fur texture qualities this pristine, making Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga and Roo actually
fit the bill as the stuffed animals that they originally were in A.A. Milne’s
works. Not that that is what they actually are in this re-telling, but then
again, they’re all so aggressively huggable that you probably won’t even
notice. Like full-on, ‘growling through your teeth as you squeeze them for dear
life’ kind of huggable, to the point where you might want to reach for the
screen in desperation. Or maybe that’s just me; I don’t know, but the effects
definitely warrant that intense a reaction.
Which is honestly kind of surprising since the story here is embarrassingly mundane. As hinted at earlier, this goes for the overworked father angle in regards to Christopher’s character, with the film essentially serving as him coming to grips with how fleeting life is and to spend less time at the grindstone and more time with his family. This is a story trope that is not only quite antiquated by this point, it never really worked all that well to begin with. Yes, I get the irony of saying that, given I ranked Liar Liar, a film entirely built around that cliché, as one of my favourite films but the point still stands: Having an entire story involving telling a responsible adult that they need to stop worrying so much about working to feed their family is simplistic to the point of being a tad misguided.
Considering the
writer’s room for this, consisting of creatives whose respective filmographies
include Tiny Furniture, Spotlight, Hidden Figures, Stuart Little and the Ben
Affleck Daredevil movie, it’s strange that this film feels as straight-forward
and plain as it does. Right down to the narrative being one of the more obvious
three-act structures I’ve come across all year, with a very clear dividing line
between introducing us to adult Christopher Robin, reintroducing him to the
Hundred Acre Wood, and a somewhat contrived chase for one group of characters
to run into another group before time runs out.
However, even with all of that going on, I can’t help but consider this film’s simplicity to be an outright positive in the film’s favour. Because the story as a whole is all about the simple things, reconnecting with one’s sense of whimsy and just horsing around. It initially shows some narrative intrigue in how it shows Christopher Robin’s trajectory as an adult, a lot of which echoes what we saw of the real-life inspiration for the character in Goodbye Christopher Robin last year, but ultimately, it’s the smaller moments that make the biggest impact. The moments where it’s just him and Pooh talking, with Pooh’s dialogue being full of those unmistakably childlike smart-aleckisms, that the film’s mood becomes something quite endearing. Add to that Geoff Zanelli and Jon Brion’s soundtrack work (with Richard M. Sherman, a legendary figure in the Disney canon, providing some original songs on top of that) and it all becomes rather heart-tugging. Or rather heart-squeezing as, despite how much comparative nothing is happening on-screen, it still manages to fill the heart with the sudden urge to weep intensely.
I sigh ever-so-slightly at writing this, but it ends up fitting with the film’s main conceit that doing nothing often leads to the very best something. Like the Paddington films, it takes a relatively simple idea and delivers it with such earnestness and genuine heart that it can’t help but worm its way into the hearts of the audience. Watching the film, it actually made me feel like a child again… and that is and will always be a beautiful thing.
All in all, while far from the most narratively intensive film I’ve sat through, this manages to absolutely win the day through sheer, whole-hearted feels. The acting is stellar, and when combined with the pitch-perfect effects work, it will likely overpower even the hardest of humans with how gosh-darn adorable it all is. The story may be very straight-forward, but as wielded by these performers speaking this dialogue and backed by this powerhouse of a musical score, it highlights the raw power of its own simplicity. Much like A. A. Milne’s original books, it’s supposed to bring people back to that state of child-like wonder… and far as I’m concerned, this film couldn’t do a better job of that if it tried.
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