Springtime with Roo

Yet another Winnie the Pooh direct to video film was released in 2004. This one, starring Jimmy Bennett, Ken Sansom, Jim Cummings, John Fiedler, Peter Cullen, Kath Soucie, and David Ogden Stiers, is an homage to A Christmas Carol, called Springtime with Roo.

Pooh (Cummings), Piglet (Fiedler), Tigger (Cummings), Roo (Bennett), and Eeyore (Cullen) pay Rabbit (Sansom) a visit to celebrate Easter, but they find a Spring Cleaning Day Celebration instead. When they upset Rabbit by not doing everything exactly as they’re told, he throws them out and they make an Easter celebration of their own. However, Tigger and the narrator (Stiers) try to convince Rabbit he still misses Easter by taking him to the past, present and future.

While Springtime with Roo is another one of the watered down movies DisneyToon Studios decided to throw to the kids, it’s not terribly bad. It delivers a fresh take on the Christmas Carol story while not beleaguering the kids with the heaviness the story usually has.

Rabbit is the story’s Ebenezer and his past shows that he stopped wanting to celebrate Easter because of his control freak nature. Nobody wanted to do it his way, so no one would do it at all. But the best part of his arc is in the future portion. Rather than him dying and someone rummaging through his things, everyone moved away, making him miserable. The narrator also gives the portion a sense of humor by having a ghostly voice before returning to his normal voice.

There’s also a good fourth wall joke with Tigger exclaiming “what the dickens, and I do mean dickens is going on here,” while looking at the camera.

It’s fun, it’s decent and Springtime with Roo will fall in the middle at #71