How to “Improve” Winnie the Pooh

That much-adored honey-junkie bear, Winnie the Pooh, made his return to the big screen last weekend; sadly for him and the rest of the gang, so did Mr. Harry Potter. Winnie the Pooh took in a meager $7.8 million — an opening weekend on a rough par with The Tigger Movie (2000), Piglet’s Big Movie (2003), and Pooh’s Huffalump Movie (2005) — while that film unsurprisingly broke records. It was a noble but futile attempt to offer counter-programming for tykes too young to take in the battle of Hogwarts, but we have a few suggestions that might draw a bigger crowd to a quaint little film.

Stunt casting

That’s the beauty of animation — we can just dub it right over! See ya, Jim Cummings! So long, Tom Kenny! Families went to see Yogi Bear for two reasons: Dan Aykroyd and Justin Timberlake. So clearly, we need to bring out the big guns: Seth Rogen IS Winnie the Pooh, Jonah Hill IS Piglet, Vince Vaughn IS Tigger, Ben Stiller IS Rabbit, Phillip Seymour Hoffman IS Eeyore. And with Shia LaBeouf as Christopher “No-no-nononono!” Robin! Ka, meet Ching.

3-D

Look, I don’t care that it’s already in theaters. I don’t care that it dims the picture. I don’t care that it takes at least months to accomplish the lousiest post-production conversion. The glasses = money. Hell, the kids are usually tickled by the mere appearance of the MPAA boilerplate floating off the screen. Yeah, words. I know, right? Why even bother making two hours’ worth of state-of-the-art effects over the course of several years when friggin’ text will keep them dazzled beyond belief? But I digress. Make it 3-D, and it becomes an event, even if it really just ends up giving the film all the depth of a grade-school diorama.

Product placement

Maybe a new T.G.I. Fridays opened in the Hundred Acre Wood. Maybe Kanga and Roo are big on drinking POM Wonderful now. The possibilities are endless. Use your imagination, Disney! Or flip through a phone book with your eyes closed, whatever works!

Cliffhanger

There have been complaints that a feature-length film only running an hour hardly merits a full price ticket in this day and age. But believe you me, if you market this as the critical set-up to next summer’s Winnie the Two, you are all set. Better yet, if you get Samuel L. Jackson to make a post-credits appearance (as, I don’t know, a toad wearing an eye patch), everyone will have to get on board lest they miss out on the next great franchise. Which reminds me…

Reboot

I’m talking a Pooh movie, independent of this one. Then a Piglet movie, a Tigger movie, Winnie the Two, another Piglet movie (he’s voiced by Ed Norton this time around), and then a big-kahuna, balls-out reunion movie revolving around their fight for the fate of the Hundred Acre Wood and its precious honey reserves. It’s going to be harrowing. Beloved characters will die. And then? We start it all over again in 2019 — maybe something simpler this time, though, something smaller, nice and hand-drawn and 2-D and perfectly old-fashioned.

Eh, we’ll see how it goes.

Review: Winnie the Pooh

As beloved as A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books are, there’s little question that most of the people currently living were first exposed to the characters through Walt Disney’s adaptations of them. If a new Pooh flick is to succeed with viewers, it has to capture the spirit of those cartoons from the 1960s and ’70s, and not necessarily the spirit of the books. (Fortunately, the two spirits are pretty similar.) Pooh’s gentle, friendly voice, the familiar theme song, the simple animation — that’s where the nostalgia is.

I am pleased to report that the new feature, simply titled Winnie the Pooh (ditching the hyphens was the most serious change Disney made to the Milne formula), re-creates the look and feel of the old cartoons about as faithfully as could be expected, given the deceased nature of most of the original voice cast. Knowing the Disney company, I assume they were tempted at some point to produce a hip, 21st-century Pooh — Pooh the Xtreme! — with a jive-talking Rabbit and a skateboarding Tigger, all produced with computers and shown in 3-D and featuring a soundtrack by Maroon 5. But any such temptations were repressed. What we have instead is hand-drawn animation, jaunty songs, an uncomplicated story, and a sweetly child-like sense of humor and wonderment. In short: classic Pooh.

You will recognize the elements of the plot immediately. Pooh (voice of Jim Cummings), dangerously addicted to honey, cannot find any in his home and goes looking to “borrow” some from his neighbors. Eeyore (Bud Luckey), the clinically depressed donkey, has lost his tail, so all the inhabitants of the Hundred-Acre Wood try to find a suitable replacement. Christopher Robin (Jack Boulter) is gone for the day but has left a note, which the animals misunderstand, sending them on a quest to rescue their pal from a nonexistent forest monster. Tigger (Jim Cummings again), the Kramer figure in this universe, tries to teach Piglet (Travis Oates) how to be a Tigger too. Owl (Craig Ferguson) talks smarter than he is, Rabbit (Tom Kenny) is flustered, Kanga (Kristen Anderson-Lopez) and Roo (Wyatt Dean Hall) serve as good-natured background — you know the routine.

This is a children’s movie in the purest, most magical sense, appealing to the under-8 crowd by talking to them at their level. The conceit is that these are tales manufactured by Christopher Robin as he plays with his stuffed animals; hence, no one is any more mature or sophisticated or worldly-wise than a little boy would be. The narrator (John Cleese) is the only adult influence on this play-world, and he treads lightly, setting our friends back on course gently and only when asked. There are no glaring of-the-moment pop-cultural references to date the film, nothing that will remind you, 20 years from now, that it was made in 2011. (Unless you look at the credits, I suppose: Zooey Deschanel sings the classic theme song; the new tunes were written by Robert Lopez, a Tony winner for Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon.) There is only sincerity and joy.

As a kid, I thought the Pooh characters’ awareness that they are in a book, going so far as to interact with the typography on the pages, was about the niftiest thing in the world. I’m happy that device has been retained, because it’s still awfully neat. Rabbit doesn’t have a very large role in the story (and his voice doesn’t sound right to me), and none of the songs are instant classics like “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers,” but you can’t have everything, can you?

Apart from one or two sly references, the movie makes almost no attempt to include material specifically for the adults in the audience — and the adults in the audience who have fond memories of previous animated Pooh adventures will find that attitude all the more appealing. How could you be transported back to your childhood if you were constantly being peppered with jokes that only the adult you would understand? In a way, it doesn’t matter that the film is just for kids. When it does its job right, everyone watching it is a kid.

Grade: A-