- Location: AMC Flatiron Crossing 14
- Winnie the Pooh is one of the most innocently charming and enjoyable animated films I've seen in a long time. For all the praise I've rightly lavished upon the ingenuity of Pixar and Studio Ghibli, this Disney effort arrives as a powerful reminder that sometimes the old formulas still work. In this case, that formula is a straightforward yet visually striking adaptation of the wondrous creations of A. A. Milne who, for the past 85 years, have occupied a forest of imagination known as the Hundred Acre Wood.
- At the center of the stories, naturally, is that bear of "very little brain," Winnie the Pooh (Jim Cummings), whose problem, as usual, is that his rumbling tummy is oh-so-very hungry. While his stores of "hunny" are all depleted, there's a pot to be had for helping the perpetually despondent Eeyore (Bud Luckey) regain his tail. Sounds simple enough, but the contest gets sidetracked when the supposedly erudite Owl (Craig Ferguson) misinterprets a note from Christopher Robin (Jack Boulter), incorrectly figuring that the young boy must have been kidnapped by a creature called the "Backson." Now Pooh must overcome his hunger-driven hallucinations to capture the Backson, save Christopher Robin, find Eeyore's tail, and -- boy, I sure hope there is some honey available at the end of this adventure.
- Admittedly, much of the film's charm stems directly from the source material. It would be difficult not to succeed with such wonderful characters as a bear whose overwhelming appetite causes him to trip his own monster trap, a Piglet (Travis Oates) so naive that he would honestly try to rescue his friends from said trap with a long novel, or a Tigger (Jim Cummings) whose freneticism prevents him from realizing that the best thing about himself is indeed that "he's the only one." None of these characters would ever be mistaken for mental giants, but their innocence makes their ignorance seem far more lovable than lamentable.
- All of that said, the filmmakers made two brilliant decisions that elevate this version of Winnie the Pooh far above what has previously appeared on film or television. The first is that they intentionally made the digital animation appear as though it were hand-drawn. It would have been easy enough to digitally render a perfectly realistic set of Tigger stripes, but they make sure you can see some pencil lines in every shot, even if pencils were hardly involved. The second bit of genius was to incorporate Milne's text in the most direct way imaginable. When Pooh isn't directly conversing with the narrator (John Cleese), he's literally walking on (or, more often than not, tripping over) the text from the books. It's an immensely respectful way to remind everyone where this wonderful bear came from, even if Pooh himself doesn't always know where he's going.
- I didn't mention Kristen Anderson-Lopez as Kanga, Wyatt Dean Hall as Roo, or Tom Kenny as Rabbit, nor did I note Zooey Deschanel's excellent contributions to the soundtrack.
- The film was preceded by a short called The Ballad of Nessie, which was utterly unremarkable aside from its narration by Billy Connolly.
