Winnie the Pooh (2011)

Think...think think...... Oh yes. I was going to review a certain silly old bear's second Animated Classic outing. Right off the bat I want to just say that this film is the closest that Winnie the Pooh has been to his Disney origins than he has been in a long time. A lot of elements of 'Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh'  can be found here which only makes this film so much more fun. We have our characters interacting with the Narrator, it is set in a storybook, the characters interact with the words of the book and even our opening showing Christopher Robin's room. Interestingly Gopher does seem to be left out, and yet it's not something I even noticed upon the first viewing.

So, with that large chunk of an opening out of the way, this sounds like a great film. Well, yes and no. While it is highly enjoyable the story is the usual Winnie the Pooh fare and we in fact have two stories going on at once. The initial story that we start with is that Eeyore has lost his tail and everyone is trying to help him find a new one. Eventually this takes a slight back seat when a note from Christopher Robin is misunderstood and provides us with the larger portion of the story. Our fluffy bear and his friends believe that Christopher has been  taken by a 'Bakson' or in reality his note simply says "Back Soon." This note, coupled with Owl's song on what a 'Backson' is prompts the characters to set a trap so they can save their friend.

While the story is pretty simple, it does feel fitting for this world. Winnie the Pooh always has been about simplicity when it comes to his stories. It may not make for an amazing story, but it does create a certain charm as it explores childhood and how things were so much simpler during that time. The film is a tad short, but we do get at least two parts of the film that made me giggle quite a bit. Though I do believe that this is the first film that has actually made me laugh or giggle out loud.

The animation is really well done, the entire time we get a storybook feeling from the backgrounds. A hallucination sequence is actually among my favourite bit of the film as we see Pooh swimming around in hunny. This is probably one of the better hand-drawn films as far as visual appearances go, or at the very least is more pleasing to me than Home on the Range was.

Now for a couple quick notes on songs. All of them are rather fun, the Backson song has a slight Heffalumps and Woozles vibe as it's depicted largely to chalk drawings coming to life. The other note I wanted to cover is that the opening song has appropriately added in Tigger who was never included in the original.

3 1/2 / 5