Thursday 7 July 2011

Winnie the Pooh review

Winnie the Pooh (U/G, 73 mins)
Directors: Stephen Anderson, Don Hall
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Kids unimpressed with the shiny emptiness of most of today’s animated output should find plenty to please them with this slender but charming big screen return of A.A. Milne’s bear of little brain. Mind you, his animal pals aren’t exactly geniuses in comparison, with know-it-all Owl’s misinterpreting of a note from Christopher Robin forming the bulk of their lightweight adventures that don’t deviate too radically from Milne’s stories - Eeyore’s missing tail being a key subplot, with the morose donkey as usual stealing the show. Regular pit-stops for a mixed bag of songs add little, but the hand drawn animation recreates Hundred Acre Wood in a way that would do E.H. Shepard proud, though the debate over the Disneyfication of Pooh will rumble on and you may want to disregard the fact that he’s voiced like Truman Capote. And though he spends the bulk of the movie thinking about his insatiable tummy and chasing the hunny dragon like some ursine crack-head, he ultimately learns that friendship comes first. He’s that sort of bear.

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