Oh bother. Get out the sad bastard meter. Do I really have to say something negative about “Christopher Robin,” a Winnie the Pooh movie of all things? How miserable of a human being do I have to be to not see Marc Forster’s film as precious, cute and adorable?
It is those things, but it’s also maudlin and looks like a parody of a Terence Malick movie and would’ve been delightful if it was say, 70 minutes long instead of pushing two hours.
Far be it from me to say that you can’t have a wonderful movie about a beloved, talking CGI bear. Go see the “Paddington” movies. In fact, someone asked me as I sighed my disappointment with “Christopher Robin,” didn’t you grow up with Winnie the Pooh?
Well of course I did. Everyone did. The character is over 90 freaking years old. This is as surefire of a nostalgia play as Disney could’ve hoped for. So it’s perplexing that at times “Christopher Robin” feels like it’s a movie for no one in particular.
Meet Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor), now an adult, whose life since leaving the Hundred Acre Wood has been miserable. A title credits montage shows Christopher going to boarding school, learning his father has died and then being shipped off to war while his wife (Hayley Atwell) is pregnant. Why yes, there is a World War I scene in a Winnie the Pooh movie. And this life of drama and hardship has now made him into a spectacular stick in the mud.
McGregor plays Christopher Robin as not dour, intense or strict, but perfectly bland. In one scene, he reads his daughter Madeline (Bronte Carmichael) a textbook as a bedtime story, which she immediately rebuffs. Thanks dad.
But of course this movie is called “Christopher Robin.” It’s not told from her perspective, but his. So we get to see scenes of Christopher furrowing his brow over cutting expenses at his company, to the point that he’s reciting manager speak at his daughter. See kids, now you can learn valuable life lessons capitalism, layoffs, annoying neighbors and snooty bosses.
It’s too reductive of a fable to be worth anything to an adult and must be like watching paint dry if you’re a toddler. Give us the bear!
The Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals look as realistic as you could hope, a clever blend of digital animation and a real, plush puppet. But they’re also worn and weathered toys, washed of color and frazzled as though they’ve been through a tumble dryer. So it’s even more ridiculous when Forster stages solemn shots of Pooh that look like he’s in a music video or a perfume ad. Here’s a close-up of Pooh brushing his hand over the bramble in a field. Here’s another of Pooh from behind like he’s deep in thought.
What’s still good is Pooh’s clumsy, slow-witted charm or his lovably literal turns of phrase. “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day,” Pooh says as a delightful word of wisdom. And he’s still voiced by Jim Cummings, who has been delivering such soothing axioms as Pooh for the last 30 years. Though I still have the closest spiritual connection with Eeyore, voiced by Brad Garrett, whose hilariously defeatist world view provides the movie some of its best one liners.
“Christopher Robin” might feel slight if it were just these moments in a smaller package, but it would be better for it. As the old Winnie the Pooh saying goes, “sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”
2 ½ stars