With a heavy dose of “hunny,” hand-drawn animation and John Cleese’s narration, Winnie the Pooh is a tongue-in-cheek rendition of AA Milne’s lovable “bear of very little brain.” What starts as a search for Eeyore’s tail (aka “A Very Important Thing To Do”) turns into a quest for Christopher Robin, whom Pooh and his cronies—Kanga, Roo, Owl, Piglet, Rabbit, Tigger—presume kidnapped by a “Backson.” No Pooh tale is complete without a line-up of rhyming musical acts, commencing with Pooh’s surprisingly hysterical song about his growing hunger (a main theme of the movie, to be sure)—accompanied by his grumbling tummy itself. Despite Disney’s lackluster track record when it comes to sequels, this one-hour Pooh-incarnation lives up to the Pooh animations from the ’60s and ’70s.
This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2011.