Christopher Robin 2018
Based on lackluster reviews, I decided to wait to see this movie. However some people seem to really like it, so I was modestly hopeful and watched it on Netflix. The setup for the movie is as tired as it could be and reminded me a lot of Mary Poppins Returns as it shows a grown man who has forgotten how to have fun and whose parents died early (Disney is always killing off parents!). The character Christopher Robin has grown and become an efficiency expert at the subsidiary of a large corporation in the 1920’s or so. Even his wife (a frumpy Haley Atwell) can see that he has lost a spark and he basically ignores her and their daughter due to the demands of work. So he is visited by his old childhood friend, Winnie the Pooh. It is pretty predictable and not nearly as clever as the other British bear movie, Paddington. But once the rest of the cast of the Hundred Acre Wood enter, the movie is fairly enjoyable and even kind of fun, while of course being nostalgic and sentimental. I actually thought the ending to the corporate part of the story was kind of decent and while it may not be quite as simple as it is portrayed, that result did happen.
This story is not about the real Christopher Robin (you would have to watch the previous year’s Goodbye Christopher Robin for that) and is another in a long line of live action versions of classic Disney animated features. The lifelike stuffed animals are interesting, looking like the real things (preserved in a library today), but of kind of limited movement and expressiveness, particularly Pooh. It is done well enough that I wasn’t even really thinking that Ewan McGregor wasn’t really picking up Eeyore. If you have seen the past movies or the books, there are references in the movie to things that happened in earlier films and many of the same jokes, but otherwise this is a new story with familiar elements. If you can make it past the unimaginative setup, the movie does get better, but still only gets a B from me, and barely that, primarily because I like the characters.
Written: 28 Mar 2019
Owned on: Digital