Winnie the Pooh
Time Out New York Project: Issue #821, July 14-20, 2011
★★★★☆
Dirs. Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall. 2011. G. 69mins. Voices of Jim Cummings, Craig Ferguson, John Cleese, Bud Luckey.
There are few things in life worse than a growly Pooh-bear tummy. But that’s exactly what our tubby little buddy all stuffed with fluff (Cummings) has when he wakes up in the Hundred Acre Wood one morning…without a full honey pot in sight! The goal is simple, but Pooh’s journey to his edible gold will prove to be delightfully digressive. And it’s heartening that the latest feature from Walt Disney Animation Studios (hand-drawn with loving detail) is content to stick with such an inventively rambling structure.
No forced plot twists or demographic-baiting characters here, as in the majority of the Dreamworks oeuvre or the Mouse House’s own overstuffed Cars 2. Instead, the Disney artisans allow the personalities first introduced by British author A.A. Milne to dictate where things will go: Depressed donkey Eeyore (Luckey) loses his tail and bemoans his existence; fatuously wise Owl (Ferguson) pontificates and writes his memoirs; Tigger (Cummings again) enthusiastically bounces everywhere — because that’s what Tiggers do. The action often breaks the fourth wall like a more genial version of “Duck Amuck” (Pooh’s encounter with a paragraph — yes, a literal paragraph — is sheer hilarity), and all the characters eventually team up to capture a hairy-scary monster called the Backson, who may have kidnapped Christopher Robin (but not really). It never feels as if we’re watching a brand-name cash-grab, but instead as if we’re participating in an endlessly imaginative afternoon of play. To tweak Pooh’s catchphrase: It’s no bother.—Keith Uhlich
