The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh 1977
I grew up watching the Wonderful World of Disney on TV which is maybe where I saw the short features that went into this movie. In particular I remember being fairly grown, maybe high school or college, and getting a kick out of the exuberance of Tigger, who it seems like was a new thing, though he was introduced in 1968, so maybe not. Watching again, I was a little disappointed at just how much this series is intended for small children, unlike most Disney features which have a better story and some good humor for adults. So I felt kind of silly buying this Blu-ray and watching the movie. I like Pooh, especially as voiced by Sterling Holloway, but he is not a real deep character. Tigger was fun, but not as funny as I remembered, a little too over the top. Having just recently watched Dumbo it was interesting to see the Heffalumps and Woozles number which is so similar to Dumbo’s Pink Elephants, right down to the same singer, Thurl Ravenscrroft, who also sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” and was the voice of Tony the Tiger. Dumbo preceeded Pooh by 36 years, but for me the difference was only a week and it is surprising to see psychedelic pieces in two kids’ films. Disney wasn’t really using celebrity voice actors yet, but they chose some familiar character actors, with Owl (and later Pooh) being played by Hal Smith who played Otis on the Andy Griffith Show, and Gopher voiced by Howard Morris who was Ernest T. Bass on the same show (the Gopher character is flat out bad in this movie, a poor addition by Disney). Piglet by John Fiedler and the narration by Sebastian Cabot are both great. It is funny to imagine all these old men getting together to make this movie for 5 year olds, like an all-star cast of grandpas. One thing I did appreciate was the narration, not only for Cabot’s rich voice, but breaking of the 4th wall as he would say things like it rained all the way until page 42, which may be from the books, but is still pretty clever. There are little nuggets throughout the movie, but mostly it is just a cute story for kids.
It has also been a gold mine for Disney, and for A.A. Milne and his heirs long before Disney’s involvement, all the way back to 1926 when the first book was published. As such, the 35th anniversary edition of the Blu-ray includes a lot of nice extras about the story and some additional content from the 1980’s. This movie is still a gem, but for me it doesn’t hold up as well today, so I will give it a B.
Written: 25 Mar 2017
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital