Winnie the Pooh (2011)
"We're all going to die"
There's something I never thought I would hear in something associated with Winnie the Pooh, but just past the midpoint of this movie that line is uttered, and while the characters don't die, a part of my childhood did.
A little bit of backstory here- I love Winnie the Pooh. I grew up with a mix of the old videos, Winnie the Pooh and The Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh and a Day For Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh and The Blustery Day, and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, along with videos and televised episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, most of which I still find entertaining today. Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too has been a holiday staple for me since I first saw it. I own copies of the original two Pooh books, 'Winnie The Pooh' and 'The House at Pooh Corner'. I own a large stuffed Pooh bear and my siblings recently bought themselves giant Tigger plushies. I have pictures from a visit to Disney World with the Pooh characters. I once wrote satirical stories based on the Pooh characters to amuse myself and friends, and I enjoyed some of the later films like The Tigger Movie and Pooh's Heffalump Movie to varying degrees. Hell, I discovered Taoism through the books 'The Tao of Pooh' and 'The Te of Piglet'.
So I'd say I have some history with the characters to say the least. When I heard that Disney was going to do a new theatrical Winnie the Pooh film, I had conflicting feelings. On one hand, like with the recent Muppet movie (which I have yet to see but heard nothing but good things about), I had hopes for a return to form. While as stated I enjoyed some of the later Pooh films, some did not work for me, and the extremely dumbed down My Friends Tigger and Pooh series just offends me. So for me, I saw this as maybe a chance to have something like the older movies, and when I heard that they were adapting some of the Pooh stories I felt even better. On the other hand, my opinion of what passes for children's entertainment these days leaves much to be desired- I grew up in what I call the Golden Age of Cartoons, the real Saturday morning era, a time when even the cartoons for really young children were well written and enjoyable. The era sadly has died, and save for a very small minority of shows I've caught, most children's shows seem to think that kids are morons. They talk down to the children and treat them like idiots, and I am not a fan. I really did not want them to do this to my beloved childhood friend on a cinematic scale.
But then reviews came out that it was a decent film, and I put it on my watch list although I did not intend to watch it for some time. That is until boredom hit me and I remember that I had heard the film was short, so figured I'd throw it on as a time killer, maybe get some nostalgia out of it and be done.
I was wrong.
If I were to describe this film is the least amount of words possible, I would call it mean-spirited. Now even the old Pooh films had moments of this, but they were far between and tended to be left to the more unlikable characters- Rabbit, Owl, and Eeyore, the busy body, the know it all, and the manic depressive, leaving the rest to go about their business. But not in this film- this film even characters like Pooh are not without guilt- I never thought I'd see Pooh mistreat Piglet as much as he does in this film without some kind of resolution. Moments that should be simple slapstick go too far and just appear to be cruel- a good example being a post credit scene that I know people are expected to laugh at but I just felt ashamed by. Likewise, the overuse of Pooh's hunger- yes, we know he loves honey and his desire to get some when hungry has long been a staple of the character and the stories- but in this case they push it. I can understand one, maybe two moments where we can see he is starving and so can the other characters, and they just pass the food over him without a thought, but by the fifth or sixth time, I wanted to take a shotgun to the Hundred Acre Wood gang- especially Owl and Rabbit. The two were never at the top of my favorite character list, but in this movie they really amp up the asshole factors of both- there is as point where Rabbit just starts beating on Pooh- sure the silly old bear doesn't notice, but watching an insane looking Rabbit pound Pooh's head in anger is crossing a line in my book. Rabbit may get cross, he did so a whole lot in the older cartoons, but I never remember him actually assaulting another character. While on his character, I love Tom Kenny, he's a funny actor and voice actor, but he pretty much modified his Spongebob voice for Rabbit and did not look back- maybe they figured kids would catch on to the familiarity and ignore the fact that he is punching Pooh in the head. And Owl, man, he was always a pompous know-it-all, but he's adding completely ignorant to his resume- a good example, when everyone is trapped in a pit except Piglet, Owl delivers a speech to him, flying out of the pit as he does so, before floating back in to the astonished looks of the others. Yes they reveal their looks are due to his speech, but to watch this scene, which includes the earlier mentioned death line, and not find yourself saying "why the hell doesn't he just fly them out of there? We know he can!" It just seems to be put there for people to question it, which I find quite stupid. If you are going to put that scene in, have one of the others comment on it- they are simple animals yes but that never stopped them before! Back to that line, yes it is delivered by Eeyore, and yes his entire character is built on endless misery, but the moment he says that line, he moves from just being sad to full on depressive. I don't want a suicidal sounding Eeyore in my movie, that is pushing the character too far.
The film seems to do a lot of that come to think of it- it pushes Owl's pompousness, Rabbit's short fuse, Eeyore's depression, Pooh's hunger, it just jacks everything up- and still doesn't even hit the hour mark. That's right, the film, which was released in theatres for people to pay to see, and as noted, theatre prices are not cheap, clocks in at 51 minutes, only coming close to an hour with credits, both opening and closing, and the post credit scene and even then it still misses the mark by almost two minutes. What makes this even worse is the two stories they use in the film seem so chopped, that they could have easily hit the hour mark and maybe a bit more with a little bit story elements put in. There's just so little really going on in this film, save for a few moments, that I really feel bad for the people who went out and spent 13-14$ on tickets for it.
Now that's not to say the movie is all bad, even the worst movies have some redeeming qualities, or at least I like to think so. The animation is top notch, which given how far Disney has moved away from the hand drawn animation front is quite incredible. The songs are ok, I'd say other then Zooey Deschanel's cover of the classic Pooh theme and the song about The Backson, the rest are pretty forgettable and a little annoying. There are also a few really funny moments, such as when Pooh tries to reach for a honey pot Owl has put on a shelf, and the stitching on his stomach tears, letting some of the fluff out- that scene is really a throwback to the exercise scene from Winnie the Pooh and The Honey Tree when Pooh tears a stitch on his butt while exercising, and made me smile. Likewise, the interactions with John Cleese's Narrator were well done and again were reminiscent of the ones from the older cartoons- a personal favorite being at the start when The Narrator, unable to wake Pooh up, resorts to turning the book upside-down so that Pooh falls out of bed. Again it's a quick scene that made me laugh, but as a whole such scenes were few and far between.
What I don't understand is what appears to be such a drastic change in the approach to the film. The changes to the characters don't serve much purpose other then to add to the overall mean feel of the film. While the film isn't nearly as dumbed down as some other children entertainment I've seen, it's mean which I think is worse, because at least I can find a reason for the dumbing down of things even if I disagree- the idea seems to be that kids are stupid, so what they watch doesn't have to be well written or intelligent because they will watch anything. Again, I disagree but at least I can put it to words- I can't do the same for a mean film- I understand it in movies for teens, because they are at an age where the world can be cruel to them, but why do little kids need to see something mean in Winnie the Pooh? Are we trying to prepare them for the cruel outside world as infants now? Do we want them to say "Well if Pooh's friends mistreat one another I guess it's ok that mine do the same". Winnie the Pooh to me has always been about friendship, happiness, imagination and the like- stuff I did not see in this film. I've said in recent years that kids today seem to lack the imagination that my generation and the ones before it seemed to have, and maybe that's because we are giving them stuff like this to feed it- if you feed a dog scraps it's not going to grow up strong, and if you feed a child's imagination poorly conceived and badly written cartoons, it's not going to have much to work with. You can say that I am not the target for this film and while that is true, it doesn't change what’s up there on the screen. The film may not be for me, but it is for kids and I don't like what they are seeing.
1.5 Empty Honey Pots out of 5
I never thought I'd write something like this about Winnie the Pooh, and it hurts me to have to do so. To see these characters fall so far from the level they were when I knew them really makes me worry about the kids that are watching this film and the rest of the stuff that’s out there. Until next time, I'm going to find some of my old Winnie the Pooh tapes and try to feel better. I'm The Drew, and I be very disappointed.
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