Winnie the Pooh

After Lasseter took over, the three previous theatrically released Winnie the Pooh films were stricken from the main canon. However, in 2011, Disney’s 51^st animated film was a part of the franchise aptly named Winnie the Pooh. Starring Jim Cummings, Travis Oates, Tom Kenny, Craig Ferguson, Bud Luckey, Jack Boulter, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, and Wyatt Hall, it was narrated by John Cleese and had music performed by Zooey Deschanel, which were written by the co-writers of Avenue Q. It grossed $44.7 million.

When Pooh (Cummings) runs out of honey, he goes to find some and finds that Eeyore (Luckey) is missing his tail. But when everyone goes to find one, it’s discovered that Christopher Robin has gone away for a while, but left a note and everyone assumes he was captured by a monster called the Backson.

 This film really hearkens back to the 70s and the original film, especially in the characterizations. Everyone is back to their incredibly oblivious selves, highlighting their quirky qualities rather than playing up the negative. Pooh is back to being dim, yet very aware, Piglet isn’t that scared anymore so much as he’s high strung and says the oddest things, Rabbit is still highly on edge, but it’s not about work, Tigger has returned to being the overly confident blowhard and Owl is back to being somewhat smart, but just barely smarter than anyone else. And notice that Gopher isn’t in this. Just like he wasn’t in the books or the first movie.

It’s also much less dramatic than the films from the 90s and 2000s, which can be seen in many of its gags. For instance, at one point, Owl keeps talking about the “issue” at hand and Pooh constantly thinks he’s sneezing. There’s also a point where the gang, sans Piglet, is stuck in a hole and Piglet is trying to get them out. It keeps building on gags that don’t work, like when Piglet finds a rope, but cuts it up for each of them. And yet, it doesn’t occur to anyone that Owl, who is in the pit, can fly. And when he does fly up to encourage Piglet to travel to Christopher Robin’s house, h flies right back and everyone compliments him on the speech. And one of the plots is finding a new tail for Eeyore. And a song is sung every time a new tail is found. Including when Eeyore uses an anchor as one.

Then there’s the plot, which consists of three chapters from the books turned into one coherent story. And with all the scenes that don’t advance the plot, it really enforces that it’s all in Christopher Robin’s imagination.

Better than all the films between this and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. If there ever was a place to bring the series to a close, this is it.

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