"It's always a sunny day, when Christopher Robin comes to play."

Christopher Robins

Mini Non-Spoiler Review

[July 30th, 2018]

[PG, 1hr 44min, Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Live Action]

Having stumbled a bit here and there with a number of live action adaptations of their beloved animated classics, they have been hitting their marks as of late with Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and the Jungle Book. Having find their own proven winning formula for this particular approach towards their own properties, they try to give it a new twist to freshen up the adaptation with instead of just a straight up retelling and this one in particular is a perfect example of that with a Hook-like twist to the Winnie the Pooh franchise. It definitely works well for me!

If you can't tell from the title itself, the narrative focuses heavily on the Christopher himself as we see him having to leave Winnie the Pooh and the rest of his friends behind as he is moving to another place. While we see that he is moving on with his own life by being involved with the war and then meet someone and have a family of his own, we see how the eventual decline of the lives of those in the Hundred Acre Woods matches with how Robins' life is being bogged down by the heaviness of responsibilities being put upon him and the mundanity of reality itself. Inadvertently pushing away even his own family members, Pooh is being brought back into his life whether by coincidence or fate to bring back joy into his life and make him remember and recognize what is truly important between his job and his family. That's the gist of the storyline and I believe that they executed it perfectly as we see the juxtaposition of tone and approach between the real life and the cheery life in the Woods, seeing the effective contrast of the viewpoint to life and how embracing your inner child would benefit you tremendously every once in awhile.

Focusing on the child instead of the stuffed animals brought to life might irk some of the fans of the originals but it fits this particular approach with visual representation of the muted colour and more realistic quality to the Hundred Acre residents, as we venture into real life a little bit more than the drawn counterpart. The tone is much more somber in the opening minutes especially if compared to the original series but the eventual turn in the third act makes up for all of that negativity with a virtually limitless amount of positivity from Pooh and friends. Ewan McGregor is perfectly casted since he can portray a down on his luck worker for the first half of the film while being a child inside an adult's body in the latter half. I especially love having the original voice cast comes back to reprise their roles and seeing the fully realised and highly realistic CGI stuffed animals being wonderfully animated to complement their voice performances certainly makes my heart warm with emotions.

I can't recommend this feature enough for you to watch with the rest of the family! I'm sure you would be fully entertained from start to finish ... or at least until Christopher and Pooh meet again!

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P.S. How he finds the solution to the predicament he was in to save other people's jobs could be the one instance where they might have jump the shark!