Christopher Robin (2018)

Winnie the Pooh stories work best in short story form. Pooh has small little adventures, often loosely connected, which centre on the zen philosophy personified by the silly old bear. The classic Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was originally told as short films and then strung together into one longer movie. Telling a longer story featuring the characters is a bit of a challenge as the conceit works best in these brief vignettes. Pooh is about living in the moment. "What day is it? Today. Oh good, that's my favourite day."

Christopher Robin is about adults forgetting the lessons of childhood and needing to relearn them. And it is told in director Marc Forster's lush, rose coloured glasses style of telling beautifully lovely sad tales. Despite the initial joy of seeing the stuffies of Robin's childhood brought to plush CGI life, it turns out this story is more challenging than it would seem.

I didn't feel the longer form story worked in Christopher Robin. The story of a grown up Christopher rediscovering his childhood is filled with adorable but shallow cliches and his "solution" is a bit of a cop out. It's all just too simple to be real. This is a problem because the Pooh stories traditionally leave it to the audience's imaginations as to whether or not the adventures are the product of Robin's imagination or if the toys truly do have animated lives. This film jumps firmly into the "this is real" side of that question yet doesn't do a good job of making it feel real.

But, despite all this, the film still works. Because when it does what is important, it does it well. It captures the nature of the characters. And for all it's bungling of telling a believable story, it makes us feel the moral of its story. Pooh and Robin are real. Their relationship is real. And the philosophy that draws us all into Pooh's world is truly captured.

So in the end Christopher Robin is lovely. Forster's style fits it all well and he makes a lovely movie. If you can get past the silliness of most of it, the emotions will sweep you up and carry you off to the 100 Acre Wood. And I guess that is really all we need.

Christopher Robin
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Bronte Carmichael, Mark Gatiss, Jim Cummings
Director: Mark Forster
Writers: Alex Ross Perry, Alison Schroeder