Ebert: 
BY ROGER EBERT / July 13, 2011
"Winnie the Pooh" is a sweet and innocuous children's movie based on the enduring tale of goings-on in Hundred Acre Wood. Although it's obviously intended for grade schoolers and below, it may be appreciated by adults who grew up with the A.A. Milne books and the drawings by E.H. Shepard that are so closely identified with it. This is that rare book that can hardly be thought of apart from its illustrations.
In a time of shock-value 3-D animation and special effects, the look of the film is gentle and pleasing. It was hand-animated, I'm told, and the backgrounds use a subtle and reassuring watercolor style. It's a nightmare-proof experience for even the youngest viewers.
The story you can probably guess. Pooh Bear craves honey, and many adventures result from his quest. An urgent subplot involves Eeyore the donkey, who has lost his tail. A possible clue can be found in the pin that is stuck where the tail was; do you suppose it was only pinned on all the time? As a result of his loss, Eeyore is more gloomy and lethargic than usual, and indeed in a grown-up movie, we would suspect clinical depression.
This version, directed by Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall, has a particularly engaging stylistic touch: The movie blends the typography and page design of the books (or an idealization of it) with the animation, so that words literally appear on the screen and seem to be as real as the characters, sometimes even landing in a heap at the bottom of the screen.
There are some jolly songs, performed fetchingly by Zooey Deschanel, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, one of them involving a not really very scary monster named Backson, who I confess I do not remember from the books, although I have forgotten a great deal since I was 6. (I do, come to think of it, remember Milne's poetry volume Now We Are Six.)
The voices include one nice surprise, Craig Ferguson playing Owl. There are also Jim Cummings as Winnie the Pooh and Tigger (who always makes me think of Sugar Frosted Flakes). John Cleese is the narrator. The dubbing talents otherwise seem to have been selected for their voices and not for their fame; we don't get such stand-bys as Angelina Jolie, Jack Black or Johnny Depp. (When an animated movie advertises it "stars" Johnny Depp, what does that mean to people?)
The film is not long at 69 minutes. It is preceded by an animated short about Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, who we discover was displaced from her beloved pond by evil men constructing a golf course. Never has Nessie been so benign. The whole program could make a nice introduction to moviegoing for a small child.
This extends to the voice work. The new voice cast seems to have been chosen largely for its ability to simulate the tones of the actors in the older films; hence, Jim Cummings, doing both the title bear and the raucous Tigger, is a remarkable sound-alike for Sterling Holloway and Paul Winchell, the respective vocal originators of those characters. Even the great and hardly unknown John Cleese, not an indistinct vocal presence himself, goes to some lengths to sound like original narrator Sebastian Cabot. And he succeeds.
Which isn't to say that the film entirely ignores this modern world, or the advanced animation production techniques this modern world has to offer. There are a slew of new original songs in this brisk feature, tunes co-written by "Book of Mormon" co-creator Robert Lopez (parents, fear not: These songs are clean as a whistle) and sung by the princess of the new winsomeness, Zooey Deschanel. And while the animation all looks very hand-drawn -- down to the slightly irregular, almost pulsating lines that form Tigger, contributing much to that character's kinetic dynamism and reminding us how much this character must have inspired certain aspects of "Calvin and Hobbes" -- the film has a few set pieces that clearly must have benefited from some kind of cyber assist, most notably a charming and sticky sequence in which Pooh hallucinates swimming in honey. The storytelling's also niftily clever, showing the characters walking across the words that make up the storybook the audience is supposed to be "in," and at certain point using its letters to advance the action. After the noisome and incoherent "Meet the Robinsons," I wouldn't have imagined that co-directors Stephen Anderson and Don Hall had it in them, but working with a writing staff of more than a half-dozen others, they concoct something consistently lively and clever and engaging and lovely to look at.
This "Pooh" adapts -- or, I should say, extrapolates from, or takes great liberties with -- Chapter 5 of "The House at Pooh Corner," in which Christopher Robin leaves a note for his woodland friends misspelling the words "Back Soon," which leads the fake-erudite tall tale-telling Owl to make up a creature called the Backson. In the book, the Owl trails off after demurring as to whether Christopher's new friend is an Herbaceous or Spotted Backson, but in this film, using the chalkboard that's proving a poor substitute for Eeyore's missing tail (said tale being the engine that's been driving the story up to that point) he draws out an exciting, woodland-friends-frightening legend of a ferocious forest monster that, he leads all the others to believe, has kidnapped poor Christopher. (The sequence in which the Backson chases the lovable characters through the 100 Acre Wood is rendered in a lively and ultra-colorful simulation of a chalkboard-animation rendition of same, another particularly nifty instance of how the filmmakers change up the movie's look at specific points.)
The catch here for adults is that for all of its fun, "Winnie the Pooh" is still is very much a movie for children, as opposed to a movie for children that's ostensibly equally appreciable for adults, as so much Pixar fare tends to be. Unless you're unusually in touch with your inner child, or are some kind of animation freak (and this reviewer has been inclined to indulge that tendency over the years), there are going to be points while watching this when you're going to be very aware of taking one for the team, as it were. And if you're one of those folks who shares Dorothy Parker's famed low opinion of Pooh (her review of Milne's "Pooh Corner" contains the phrase "fwowed up"), you may want to make the film outing a task for your nanny, and just sit at home and drink your pain, you poor cynical heartless bastard you.
The version of the feature I saw was preceded by a very charming short called "The Legend of Nessie," a Scottish-set fable whose look harks back to the halcyon days of famed Disney designer and colorist Mary Blair, whose artwork graced such Disney classics as "Cinderella" and "Peter Pan" and who was behind that whole "It's a Small World" World's Fair thing. See, I wasn't kidding with that whole "animation freak" business.
Glenn Kenny is chief film critic for MSN Movies. He was the chief film critic for Premiere magazine from 1998 to 2007. He contributes to various publications and websites, and blogs at http://somecamerunning.typepad.com. He lives in Brooklyn.
"Winnie the Pooh" is a sweet and innocuous children's movie based on the enduring tale of goings-on in Hundred Acre Wood. Although it's obviously intended for grade schoolers and below, it may be appreciated by adults who grew up with the A.A. Milne books and the drawings by E.H. Shepard that are so closely identified with it. This is that rare book that can hardly be thought of apart from its illustrations.
In a time of shock-value 3-D animation and special effects, the look of the film is gentle and pleasing. It was hand-animated, I'm told, and the backgrounds use a subtle and reassuring watercolor style. It's a nightmare-proof experience for even the youngest viewers.
The story you can probably guess. Pooh Bear craves honey, and many adventures result from his quest. An urgent subplot involves Eeyore the donkey, who has lost his tail. A possible clue can be found in the pin that is stuck where the tail was; do you suppose it was only pinned on all the time? As a result of his loss, Eeyore is more gloomy and lethargic than usual, and indeed in a grown-up movie, we would suspect clinical depression.
This version, directed by Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall, has a particularly engaging stylistic touch: The movie blends the typography and page design of the books (or an idealization of it) with the animation, so that words literally appear on the screen and seem to be as real as the characters, sometimes even landing in a heap at the bottom of the screen.
There are some jolly songs, performed fetchingly by Zooey Deschanel, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, one of them involving a not really very scary monster named Backson, who I confess I do not remember from the books, although I have forgotten a great deal since I was 6. (I do, come to think of it, remember Milne's poetry volume Now We Are Six.)
The voices include one nice surprise, Craig Ferguson playing Owl. There are also Jim Cummings as Winnie the Pooh and Tigger (who always makes me think of Sugar Frosted Flakes). John Cleese is the narrator. The dubbing talents otherwise seem to have been selected for their voices and not for their fame; we don't get such stand-bys as Angelina Jolie, Jack Black or Johnny Depp. (When an animated movie advertises it "stars" Johnny Depp, what does that mean to people?)
The film is not long at 69 minutes. It is preceded by an animated short about Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, who we discover was displaced from her beloved pond by evil men constructing a golf course. Never has Nessie been so benign. The whole program could make a nice introduction to moviegoing for a small child.
Review: Don't Pooh-Pooh 'Winnie the Pooh'
The poster for the lovely new “Winnie the Pooh” movie shows cherished characters Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore and the rest sailing for adventure on a sea of honey. While it’s an obvious image, given the title character’s unending love of the stuff, that sea of honey represents all the things that this movie thankfully avoided.
The characters aren’t floating on saccharine, nor is their craft being carried on tides of boogers and other bodily functions so beloved by the post-“Shrek” spate of kid flicks.
“Winnie the Pooh” is such a perfect morsel of entertainment — appropriate for young children, funny enough to keep their older siblings and parents laughing, faithful to the original Disney short subjects (and the A.A. Milne/E.H. Shepard books on which they were based) — that it defies cynicism. Or, you’ll pardon the expression, pooh-pooh-ing.
This sweet, low-key, and utterly lovable movie reminds us that “fun for all ages” isn’t just a marketing come-on.
The film takes us through a typically jam-packed day in the Hundred Acre Wood. Pooh (voiced by Jim Cummings, perfectly channeling Sterling Holloway’s iconic cadences) wakes up with a gurgling tummy and a house full of empty honeypots, but there’s no time for food: Eeyore’s (Bud Luckey) tail has gone missing, and Christopher Robin (Jack Boulter) proposes a contest where everyone will seek out a substitute.
Alas, neither Pooh’s cuckoo clock, or a new tail knitted by Kanga (Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who co-wrote new songs with her husband, “Avenue Q” composer Robert Lopez), or an umbrella, or an anchor, or a balloon, or a chalkboard with T-A-E-L written on it by Owl (Craig Ferguson) will quite do the trick.
And if the saga of Eeyore’s missing tail weren’t enough to keep everyone running around, Owl’s misreading of a note from Christopher Robin (in which he said he’d be “back soon”) leads to a general panic about a creature called the Backson, a hideous beast who puts holes in socks, breaks toys, scribbles in books, and fiddles with your alarm clock so you oversleep.
Everyone attempts to set a trap for the Backson, while Tigger (Cummings again, and his Paul Winchell is as good as his Sterling Holloway) puts a spring on Eeyore’s backside in an attempt to turn the perpetually-depressed donkey into a fighting “Tigger Two.”
If you’re a fan of old-school Disney, you’ll love the 2D, watercolor-over-pencil-drawing look of the film, not to mention the participation of animation vets like Burny Mattinson and Andreas Deja. The vintage Pooh tunes from the Sherman Brothers blend seamlessly with the new songs, and even Zooey Deschanel’s vocals feel, in this context, more timeless than hipster.
And while the whole enterprise is decidedly low-key, it’s never dull or slow or dumbed-down.
John Cleese’s narration is puckish without ever being cruel or obvious, and there’s lots of visual playfulness, from the Busby Berkeley–inspired musical number “Everything is Honey” to the way that the letters and paragraphs of the storybook in which this whole tale is taking place become comic props for the characters to stumble upon and even use to get themselves out of vexing situations.
There’s something to be said about a movie, particularly for children, where there’s not a single item on-screen that plugs in or runs on batteries.
Popular cartoons that are so aggressively contemporary may appeal to young audiences in the now, but their technology (to say nothing of their pop culture references) are going to horribly dated within a decade or two. It says something about the strength of the source material that Pooh doesn’t have to carry an iPad — and Tigger doesn’t have to be played by an actual tiger with a computer-animated mouth — for “Winnie the Pooh” to connect so strongly with audiences.
The inclusion of Cleese and Ferguson, incidentally, plays less like the recent spate of let’s-get-celebrity-voices and more in the tradition of simply casting the best voice actor for the part. They blend in with a spot-on ensemble (which also includes Travis Oates as Piglet, Wyatt Dean Hall as Roo, and Tom Kenny as Rabbit) rather than stand out with any kind of “check it, I’m famous!” grandstanding.
“Winnie the Pooh” is that rare movie that can be recommended to any and all. And if the film can withstand the onslaught of opening opposite the final chapter of the “Harry Potter” saga, one hopes that Disney and the other animation studios will give us more “Winnie the Pooh” and less “Mars Needs Moms.”
Our critic says...
'Winnie the Pooh' Lovingly Goes Old-School
Glenn Kenny, Special to MSN Movies
The first question people ask me when they learn I've seen the new "Winnie the Pooh" movie is, "So is it all CGI-ed and stuff?" And, most everybody will be happy to learn, no, it is not. The characters here are rendered and animated in the same style as in the 1960s Disney films of the beloved children's' classics, their designs having been adapted from Stephen Slesinger Inc.'s adaptations of the original book illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard. A great deal of care, it would seem, was taken in preserving the cute and homey feel of those cartoons, which were done in the flatter, somewhat limited animation style that was a great contrast to the elaborate work that distinguished Disney in its early feature-making years.
Which isn't to say that the film entirely ignores this modern world, or the advanced animation production techniques this modern world has to offer. There are a slew of new original songs in this brisk feature, tunes co-written by "Book of Mormon" co-creator Robert Lopez (parents, fear not: These songs are clean as a whistle) and sung by the princess of the new winsomeness, Zooey Deschanel. And while the animation all looks very hand-drawn -- down to the slightly irregular, almost pulsating lines that form Tigger, contributing much to that character's kinetic dynamism and reminding us how much this character must have inspired certain aspects of "Calvin and Hobbes" -- the film has a few set pieces that clearly must have benefited from some kind of cyber assist, most notably a charming and sticky sequence in which Pooh hallucinates swimming in honey. The storytelling's also niftily clever, showing the characters walking across the words that make up the storybook the audience is supposed to be "in," and at certain point using its letters to advance the action. After the noisome and incoherent "Meet the Robinsons," I wouldn't have imagined that co-directors Stephen Anderson and Don Hall had it in them, but working with a writing staff of more than a half-dozen others, they concoct something consistently lively and clever and engaging and lovely to look at.
This "Pooh" adapts -- or, I should say, extrapolates from, or takes great liberties with -- Chapter 5 of "The House at Pooh Corner," in which Christopher Robin leaves a note for his woodland friends misspelling the words "Back Soon," which leads the fake-erudite tall tale-telling Owl to make up a creature called the Backson. In the book, the Owl trails off after demurring as to whether Christopher's new friend is an Herbaceous or Spotted Backson, but in this film, using the chalkboard that's proving a poor substitute for Eeyore's missing tail (said tale being the engine that's been driving the story up to that point) he draws out an exciting, woodland-friends-frightening legend of a ferocious forest monster that, he leads all the others to believe, has kidnapped poor Christopher. (The sequence in which the Backson chases the lovable characters through the 100 Acre Wood is rendered in a lively and ultra-colorful simulation of a chalkboard-animation rendition of same, another particularly nifty instance of how the filmmakers change up the movie's look at specific points.)
The catch here for adults is that for all of its fun, "Winnie the Pooh" is still is very much a movie for children, as opposed to a movie for children that's ostensibly equally appreciable for adults, as so much Pixar fare tends to be. Unless you're unusually in touch with your inner child, or are some kind of animation freak (and this reviewer has been inclined to indulge that tendency over the years), there are going to be points while watching this when you're going to be very aware of taking one for the team, as it were. And if you're one of those folks who shares Dorothy Parker's famed low opinion of Pooh (her review of Milne's "Pooh Corner" contains the phrase "fwowed up"), you may want to make the film outing a task for your nanny, and just sit at home and drink your pain, you poor cynical heartless bastard you.
The version of the feature I saw was preceded by a very charming short called "The Legend of Nessie," a Scottish-set fable whose look harks back to the halcyon days of famed Disney designer and colorist Mary Blair, whose artwork graced such Disney classics as "Cinderella" and "Peter Pan" and who was behind that whole "It's a Small World" World's Fair thing. See, I wasn't kidding with that whole "animation freak" business.
Glenn Kenny is chief film critic for MSN Movies. He was the chief film critic for Premiere magazine from 1998 to 2007. He contributes to various publications and websites, and blogs at http://somecamerunning.typepad.com. He lives in Brooklyn.
Preschoolers will enjoy the animated feature, featuring the voices of Jim Cummings, Craig Ferguson, John Cleese and Tom Kenny and songs sung by Zooey Deschanel, while parents will appreciate the 69-minute running time, writes Todd McCarthy.
Disney refurbishes a franchise that's been one of its reliable little goldmines for half a century with Winnie the Pooh. A seamless narrative rather than a collection of segments in the manner of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1977, this gentle, lovingly wrought, for-tots-and-parents-only resuscitation of A.A. Milne's characters may have unintentionally set a Hollywood record of sorts: It's 69 minutes long, including 10 devoted to the credits, meaning that 14.5 per cent of the running time details who worked on the film, including production babies (arguable feature length for the program is reached by tacking on a six-minute opening cartoon, The Ballad of Nessie, about the Loch Ness monster's self-created lake of tears).
Whether or not Disney Animation always intended that the feature proper would come at under an hour, the film will be a first weekend matinee choice for more than a few preschooler families (there's no weeknight audience for it) before becoming a staple homevid and TV title. The defiantly low-tech offering bows in France on April 13, in the U.K. and Germany the next day and in seven other territories in advance of the July 15 U.S. launch.
So definitive are the soft, simple, pastel evocations of the English countryside in E.H. Shepard's original Pooh illustrations that revisionist versions would be unthinkable. Directors Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall (director and a writer, respectively, on Meet the Robinsons) do nothing to rock the boat, delivering rich, beautifully rendered visual backdrops for the mild antics of the familiar characters.
And familiar they are, for anyone who's been on the planet for more than four or five years. On renewed acquaintance, Pooh's obsessive search for bottomless amounts of honey and Eeyore's distress over having lost his tail possess limited resonance, as do the repetitive cutesy misspellings that dot the landscape. Unlike some other characters from children's literature and cartoons, Milne's sweet and docile creations seem like little more than stuffed animals given voice and of genuine appeal only to humans still attached to the likes of teddy bears and other cuddly sleepytime companions.
The music, too, represents a throwback, both the new compositions and the retreads of Sherman Brothers tunes here dressed up with new vocals by Zooey Deschanel. Little kids will enjoy it all, while parents, when not checking their cell phones, will be thankful for the thoughtfully brief running time.
Whether or not Disney Animation always intended that the feature proper would come at under an hour, the film will be a first weekend matinee choice for more than a few preschooler families (there's no weeknight audience for it) before becoming a staple homevid and TV title. The defiantly low-tech offering bows in France on April 13, in the U.K. and Germany the next day and in seven other territories in advance of the July 15 U.S. launch.
So definitive are the soft, simple, pastel evocations of the English countryside in E.H. Shepard's original Pooh illustrations that revisionist versions would be unthinkable. Directors Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall (director and a writer, respectively, on Meet the Robinsons) do nothing to rock the boat, delivering rich, beautifully rendered visual backdrops for the mild antics of the familiar characters.
And familiar they are, for anyone who's been on the planet for more than four or five years. On renewed acquaintance, Pooh's obsessive search for bottomless amounts of honey and Eeyore's distress over having lost his tail possess limited resonance, as do the repetitive cutesy misspellings that dot the landscape. Unlike some other characters from children's literature and cartoons, Milne's sweet and docile creations seem like little more than stuffed animals given voice and of genuine appeal only to humans still attached to the likes of teddy bears and other cuddly sleepytime companions.
The music, too, represents a throwback, both the new compositions and the retreads of Sherman Brothers tunes here dressed up with new vocals by Zooey Deschanel. Little kids will enjoy it all, while parents, when not checking their cell phones, will be thankful for the thoughtfully brief running time.
No comments :
Post a Comment