Winnie the Pooh

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. –Molly Segal