Confession: I never watched Winnie-the-Pooh as a child. It’s sad, I know. But my girlfriend did, and that’s how I ended up seeing Christopher Robin.
Christopher Robin picks up where the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories presumably left off, with the title character himself having left the Hundred Acre Wood, grown into an adult and started his own family while working for a demanding, soul-sucking luggage company.
Meanwhile in Hundred Acre Wood, “Pooh,” played by Jim Cummings, who has voiced Pooh since 1988, looks mournfully for his vanished friends. Wandering into the door through which Robin used to come, he stumbles into Robin’s home of 20th-century London, and the two reunite.
As Winnie-the-Pooh fans would expect, the stakes of the movie are reasonably low. Robin’s briefcase of “important things” controls most of the plot, being the vessel for all of his business spreadsheets and stagnant adulthood, and the characters bumble their way around London and Hundred Acre Wood in a relaxed story. There are no dark, gritty, CGI Heffalumps and Woozles soaring around the screen with Michael Bay explosions—good to see Disney is slowly kicking their addiction.
Instead, as with all Winnie-the-Pooh stories, the concepts and themes in the story are mature and surprisingly subtle.
Keeping with the Pooh spirit, Christopher Robin is arguably a movie whose conflict exists solely in the title character’s head. The whole story is a battle between his outward maturity and inner childhood as his past returns to him, a universal story for anyone who has suffered the anxiety of adulthood. This is thematically and visually conveyed with blissful cinematography, contrasting incredibly realistic displays with the whimsically animated characters, maturity and youth side-by-side. Even the color of each shot is either more or less vivid, depending on which side of himself Robin is on at the time.
The dialogue also contains these frequent thematic glimpses, as Pooh’s trademark style of simple-worded, simple-minded aphorisms give even more depth to Robin’s arc, equal parts thought-provoking and childlike. The dialogue between other characters is as humorous as one would expect from the familiar faces, “Piglet,” “Eeyore” and, also voiced by Cummings, “Tigger.”
The movie admittedly loses its heart as it goes on. The portions of the film where Pooh and his friends are wandering around London feel much thinner than the rest of the movie and lead to an ending that is perhaps a pinch longer and cheesier than is necessary.
Ewan McGregor plays Robin well, but his shifts from childlike to mature can feel almost bipolar when too rushed or underdeveloped.
Other characters’ reactions to seeing stuffed animals move, talk and live are definitely not the most realistic, but, come on, if you’re watching a Winnie-the-Pooh movie, realism is not at the top of your priorities.
The live action landscape and adult characters may turn some off, but, ultimately, I was impressed with Christopher Robin. If someone like me—who never grew up on the original stories and never felt compelled to try it—liked it, then you probably will, too.
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