About 15 minutes into Disney’s Winnie the Pooh I was telling myself there was no way I could review it. I shouldn’t have even been there. The film wasn’t for me. At 34 years of age, I’m about 30 years outside the target demographic and when it comes to that demographic I’m not even a parent to one of its members. So where did that leave me?
I was left watching a film about a stuffed bear jonesing for another hit of “hunny”, which must be laced with heroin for anyone, or thing, to be that addicted to it. Meanwhile, Winnie and his illiterate friends are searching for Eeyore’s missing “tael” and growing more and more worried about an imaginary creature called a “Backson” after misinterpreting a note left by their equally illiterate friend Christopher Robin.
Of course, I’m giving you the cynical plot breakdown from the point of view of someone that felt the already short 68 minute runtime should have been dwindled down to eight or so minutes, something closer to the mildly charming Billy Connolly-narrated animated short The Ballad of Nessie that played in front of the film and is actually considered part of Winnie‘s overall running time.
This isn’t to say I can’t recognize the charm some people may find in Winnie the Pooh. There is something to be said for the way the narrator (John Cleese), and the pages of the book the story is told from, become just as much a part of the film as the characters themselves. The word ladder Pooh and gang use to escape a hole meant to trap the “Backson” is immensely clever and the animation is great. Just because I didn’t enjoy the film doesn’t mean I was blind to the artistry that went into it, but the time I spent watching it felt like an exercise in boredom.
The four songs by actress Zooey Deschanel did nothing for me outside of serving as a moment of recognition and the voice casting was equally disappointing. As someone that didn’t grow up on A.A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh” stories I have no childhood connection or memory of the golden bear in the red belly shirt. I have a vague recollection of Rabbit (voiced here by Tom Kenny) being far more disagreeable and of Tigger (voiced by Jim Cummings) being far more lovable, but that’s about the extent of my attachment. Fortunately, a film is meant to exist independent of its source material and perhaps Winnie the Pooh does, but I have to assume it exists for an audience much younger or far more nostalgic than myself.
Of course, I’m not exactly sure how Milne’s work was adapted for the screen as it surprisingly took nine writers to come up with what are essentially two nonsensical stories told over the course of what probably amounts to about 55 minutes of screen time. Considering this is said to have been based on five stories from Milne’s books I have no idea what all of these writers were working on or why it took nine of them to come up with what I saw.
As someone that appreciates the fact hand-drawn animation remains a part of feature filmmaking I would have liked for this to be a film I could champion, and there’s no escaping the fact the artistry is impressive. But should this film become a success, one thing is for certain, I won’t be lining up for Winnie the Pooh 2.
