‘Blu-ray or Bust’ - CHRISTOPHER ROBIN

‘Blu-ray or Bust’

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN (2018, PG, 104 minutes, WALT DISNEY STUDIOS)

Disney has had a rather storied past when it comes to “Winnie the Pooh”.  There have been numerous cartoons and films based on the bear’s adventures in the Hundred Acre Woods.  And, Pooh may be one of the most quotable characters the studio has ever brought to life.

So it’s a shame that this update of the denizens of that famous land isn’t more Pooh friendly.  ROBIN follows an adult Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) as he navigates life without his childhood friends.  Of course, it becomes necessary for them to help him save his family (if not his job), and their reintegration into his world is what drives this story.

The problem is that ROBIN wants to yank on your heartstrings, and as often as possible.  If you ever purposely needed a film to manipulate your feelings, this one will do nicely for you.  And it tries early on, and on multiple occasions, to do just that.  Pooh gets his feelings hurt so many times that you wish a heffalump would appear and begin chowing down on Christopher Robin, just to prove that there is justice in this universe.  The film wants to be a story about friendship, and how it never dies.  Yet, what it proves several times is how sometimes one side of that friendship has to work really stinkin’ hard to keep it alive.  Probably not the message director Marc Forster (FINDING NEVERLAND, MONSTERS BALL) wanted to deliver; alas, it is the one thing that works consistently within the writing.  Not a great message for the kiddies, methinks.

And it isn’t that CHRISTOPHER ROBIN is a bad film—it isn’t.  It just isn’t a film worthy of Pooh and his pals.  Gone is the magic that connected the multitude of characters from the earlier films and cartoons.  Also gone is the loving connection you’d feel between Robin and Pooh anytime the boy referred to him as a “silly old bear”.  The line is overused here and doesn’t carry quite the same meaning.  Pooh, at this point, is indeed old, and he and the rest of the gang show it.  Their iterations as real-life characters are done in the muted colors of the illustrations from earlier literary works, which is okay; it makes them appear more realistic, less imaginary from a child’s standpoint and more believable from an adult’s perspective.  Therein lies one of the other problems; these characters helped Christopher Robin navigate his childhood, and while their appearance here has that classical look to them, the Pooh Bear I remember did not have a hairy nose.  As an adult watching this film, I want my old Pooh back.  He doesn’t have to be vibrantly colored, but he sure as hell doesn’t need a hairy beak, either.

Redeeming moments can be found in the cinematography of Matthias Koenigswieser (who hasn’t shot much of note prior to this).  His eye wanders through the Hundred Acre Wood just enough to make it appear naturally magical, and some of the views (although used more than once in some cases) are spectacular.

There are several special features, although many are short and serve more as commercials for a film you’ve already bought.  There isn’t a whole lot of captivating behind-the-scenes stuff here, other than how they brought the characters to life through puppetry (and, yes, CGI).

Technically, you could consider this another entry in Disney’s recent exuberance into the live-action genre; after the success of their re-do’s of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and THE JUNGLE BOOK, and with ALADDIN and THE LION KING on the horizon, one would hope that at some point, they’d get back to the animation that made them a part of millions of childhoods.  And maybe make a film that doesn’t have “dead parent” as a plotline…

Film Grade: C

Special Features: C+

Blu-ray Necessary: Not necessary (due to the lack of heffalumps and woozles)

-- T.S. Kummelman