Winnie the Pooh

It has been 45 years since Disney released Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. What I remember loving the most about that film was the music by Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman and the voice of Sterling Holloway as Pooh. To this day I can still sing the opening song “Deep in the Hundred Acre Woods” and when appropriate I can quote Pooh when my I get “Rumbly in my tumbly.” For this reason I was not looking forward to a new version of the film. The old one has served me well for years. But after seeing Winnie the Pooh (2011) I was pleased with some of the innovations. This Winnie the Pooh was much more a literary interpretation.

The film opens with live action footage surveying Christopher Robin’s room and establishing all the characters, and then it transitions into animation. But instead of using some of today’s modern animation techniques, Disney has stayed with the classic 2D look only this time the animation is literally pouring out of the pages. The inhabitants of Hundred Acre Woods actually live within the pages of the A. A. Milne book and you can see them walk from page to page and even pick up words and move them around like props. For instance when all of the characters fall into a pit created to catch a monster, one of them begins to stack the words and uses them as a ladder to climb out. It was like the words themselves were another character.

The impact of this marriage between word and illustration is like a celebration of children’s literature. It gives the written word a gravitas and respect. But it also makes the film feel like it’s “good for you “, like mom is making you eat your broccoli. It is humorous, sweet, but not laugh-out-loud funny. It lacks the crudeness and slapstick found in many children’s films today. My concern is that kids will find it too old fashioned.

Sometimes as a reviewer you wish you could look at something with totally fresh eyes. Everything we see we bring our experience and background with us. In most cases this is a good thing. But when it is a children’s film, it’s hard to return to that place of innocence. I liked this Winnie the Pooh film, I just don’t know if it is as magical as the one remembered from my childhood. I guess I’ll have to ask a kid, and then check in with him 20 years later. Time has a way of changing our perspective, yet Winnie the Pooh has stood the test of time, 1926 and still going strong, Pooh is a remarkable bear.

Rating: First Run Pooh, a remarkable bear.