Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

We now reach the original Winnie the Pooh film, which was originally three smaller shorts that were pieced together to create one film. Before he started appearing in his own t.v show during the 80's, this was generally our first encounter with the silly old bear and is a great way to introduce Pooh and his world to viewers.

First off, the animation is full of charm and whimsy and it really captures the storybook feeling quite well. While the technology available at the time does date the film a tad, it still holds it own quite well even against the more modern Winnie the Pooh film.

Once again the story, or stories, are very simple which usually creates a problem in films. This, like Peanuts, is not the case for Winnie the Pooh since our characters don't need overly complex plots, and just seeing their day to day lives is entertaining as it is. Everyone in the Hundred Acre Wood fits into things in their own way and nobody ever feels useless or like they are taking up too much time from other characters. During these three shorts we are also introduced to Gopher, who has his own clever joke about how he's "Not in the book," which is of course a reference to how he is an original character created by Disney.

One thing I really want to note about this film is how the voices really seem to fit well with the characters. Nobody came across as an odd choice or sounded weird when matched to their characters. I think perhaps this original voice cast is my favourite group, when comparing them to the more recent film. Of course it is silly to expect the original cast to still be around after all these years, but they really added to the charm the characters have.

This film is also where we get the wonderfully WTF'tastic sequence, "Heffalumps and Woozles," which is perhaps one of my favourite scenes out of the whole film. Some parts of it that stood out for me were the Heffalumps and Woozles in band uniforms, the Heffalumps as hot air balloons, and when one Heffalump looks like a bubble and fills with honey. The sequence did feel a tad longer than I had remembered, yet I still enjoyed every second of it.

So. It sounds like this film would be a contender for a full 5/5 right? Well. Not quite. Each of these three shorts on their own are very deserving of a full 5/5 score, but when patched together it does give that feeling of "Too much of a good thing" and slightly makes things drag out. The other detracting factor is that Gopher does come across a bit too strongly at times, and he tends to push his "Not in the book" line at us one too many times. With that said I am all too happy to give this film the following score:

4 1/2 /5