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| photo courtesy of aintitcool.com |
Disney invites you to
return to the Hundred Acre Wood in Christopher
Robin, a new spin on the classic Winnie the Pooh stories by A.A. Milne. Ewan
McGregor plays grown-up Christopher Robin, whose busy work schedule is
interrupted by the surprise appearance of his childhood pal, Pooh (Jim
Cummings). Pooh needs Christopher’s help to find the rest of his missing friends,
but of the two of them, it’s Christopher who needs rescuing the most.
With Christopher Robin, Disney produces one
of its weaker nostalgic modernizations. Director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Stranger than Fiction) brings an ample helping of love and reverence
to his adaptation, which ensures that Christopher
Robin has more than enough sweetness to go around. In other areas, however,
the movie falls desperately short.
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| photo courtesy of geektyrant.com |
Christopher Robin
lends itself to two outstanding comparisons: Hook, another movie about a grown-up storybook character
rediscovering his youth, and Paddington,
the recent series of anthropomorphic bear movies which have received critical
acclaim. Robin lands somewhere in
between the two—not quite as conceptually muddled as Hook, but nowhere near as effortlessly delightful as Paddington. Or, perhaps more accurately,
it captures a bit of Paddington’s
spirit… and yet gets weighed down by Hook’s
mistakes.
Robin
has most of the requisite pieces to serve as Disney’s answer to Paddington. Winnie the Pooh is a worthy
star—his scenes with McGregor in the real world are the film’s best—McGregor is
as likeable as they come, and the other cuddly characters (especially Brad
Garrett’s Eeyore) make for fun companions. Robin’s
story certainly allows plenty of laughs, life lessons, and “aww” moments. For many
audience members, I suspect, the movie will satisfy expectations.
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| photo courtesy of usatoday.com |
The problem, as in Hook, stems from a fundamental creative misstep:
pairing a fan-favorite storybook world with an older, grumpier, more cynical
version of the hero. By the time the movie reaches the present day, Christopher
Robin has become rather unpleasant. He neglects his family, fails to stand up
to his boss, and dismisses his well-meaning neighbors. He even becomes
exasperated with Winnie the Pooh (whose appearance in the real world, by the
way, he barely questions). Robin’s attitude effectively weighs down the entire first
half of the movie—who wants to spend time with an unlikeable hero?—and consequently,
the second half’s resolution feel trite, obvious, and oversimplified (even for
a kid’s film).
The effects of Robin’s
curmudgeonly, cowardly demeanor manifest in a number of ways. 1) The first half
of the film, in which he gets the most solo screen-time, feels slow. It’s
difficult, even with a worthy hero, to maintain audience interest in such dreary
surroundings. 2) Robin’s wife (played by Hayley Atwell) exists solely to lament
the changes in her husband. She’s the most one-dimensional of the core human
cast, despite being easily the most heroic. 3) When the time comes for Robin to
become likeable again, there’s little interest in exploring what these changes
would actually mean for his family
and his job. Movies like this frequently end with a magical, wave-of-the-wand
resolution, but here it seems particularly half-baked. In answer to his stodgy
boss, Robin essentially says “Maybe if we weren’t jerks, we’d do better in
business,” and saves the day.
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| photo courtesy of ew.com |
Perhaps most damningly,
Christopher Robin needn’t have been a villain in the first place. The movie
positions him as such when, in the midst of a very legitimate crisis at his
workplace—in which employee’s jobs are at stake—he refuses to go spend a weekend
away with his family. It’s hardly a careless decision, yet the movie plays it
that way anyway; making some of the subsequent scenes (as when Robin gives his
daughter the news) downright cringe-worthy. Another, more preferable version of
this premise would maintain all the sugary nostalgia… without putting its
grown-up hero in the hot seat.
TRAILER
Watch the trailer here.
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| photo courtesy of variety.com |
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