Christopher Robin

2018 Disney movie

Rating: 12/20 (Jen: 17/20)

Plot: Christopher Robin, now an adult, gets a little help from some old friends as he balances job and family.

My wife has always been a fan of the A.A. Milne books and, maybe to a lesser extent, the Disney animated movies. This came out right around our anniversary, and I suggested that we go on a little date and see it. I was surprised when she said no.

"No? Why not?"
"It just looks creepy."
"Really? I think the characters kind of look like they do in the books, don't they?"
"I guess, but I just don't like science fiction and time travel movies."

Science fiction and time travel movies? If my wife, a fan of all things Pooh, thought this was going to be a science fiction movie, it seems like Disney really screwed up with the marketing.

For the record, I didn't think the CGI Pooh characters looked creepy at all. I liked how they looked and moved, exactly like stuffed-animal friends should. And I've always been a little sexually aroused by Kanga anyway. There are some mildly humorous moments, and some great moody shots of a Hundred Acre Woods that looks much different from the early scene where Christopher Robin is a child who is likely already a little too old to be having tea parties with his stuffed toys. 

Jim Cummings better have been paid loads of cash for voicing both Pooh and Tigger. He's great! On paper, Brad Garrett seems like the perfect actor to voice Eeyore, but I just thought he sounded too much like Brad Garrett. Peter Capaldi and Toby Jones also provide the voices of Rabbit and Owl.

Other than that, I didn't like much about this movie at all. A lot of the problem is that it really lacks a distinctive voice. It coasts along on the charm of already-established characters and even borrows a bunch of well-known lines from those characters, but what is charming and whimsical in most of the Disney animated versions and the Milne books seems really flat here. Where this should be magical, it's just not.

Another problem is that the adult Christopher Robin is a total prick. This is a bit of a redemption, but the character development is weak and there's never really a point where he grows or learns in an authentic way. There's a turning point where something potentially tragic happens, and even then, he seems unwilling to turn his back on his job to be with family.

There's one point when I laughed out loud. Christopher Robin's wife and daughter have gone away to a cottage, apparently one adjacent to the Hundred Acre Woods, and Robin, who is trying to clandestinely return his bear friend and get back to work, is spotted by is family. He's traveled by train to get to this remote location, and now his family has seen him. He does exactly what any normal person would do--explain immediately apologizes and says he has to get back to work. And the wife and daughter don't even seem to have questions about why he was there in the first place! It's ludicrous.

The storytelling is really lazy here. It's like the Disney people got the idea of having a live-action Winnie-the-Pooh movie and figured any kind of story would just take care of itself. There's no magic to the narrative either, and even though I'm a bear of little brain, I had this whole story accurately mapped out in my head long before it all unraveled. Though there are some charming moments, so much of the humor is the same kind of joke over and over--one with Pooh saying something and people around him looking bemused.

I really wanted to like this. Everybody who knows me knows that I like talking bear movies more than most middle-aged men. But unfortunately, Christopher Robin is nowhere near as good as those Paddington movies.