BEFORE: Still literary - "Winnie the Pooh" counts as children's literature. If all this is too kiddie-oriented for you, rest assured that for every children's film I cross off the list, I'm finding a film about serial killers to add to the list, since I know that cop films will be taking over the countdown in a couple of months.
Voice actor Jim Cummings, the voice of the plastic flamingo in "Gnomeo & Juliet", carries over and here supplies the voice of both Pooh Bear and Tigger.
THE PLOT: When Piglet comes up missing his Hundred Acre Wood friends use Piglet's own Book of Memories to find him, discovering along the way just how big a role he's played in their lives.
AFTER: Yeah, it's a bit of a lesson film, with Piglet feeling down on himself for being small and almost useless, but he ends up saving the day. But it's a little disjointed because within that framework, there are several flashback stories - I guess someone realized that 6 characters stumbling around the forest looking for each other was a lot like 6 characters searching for a plot.
Ah, the flashbacks are adaptations of original A.A. Milne stories - I guess that makes sense, since the original books were composed of short stories and little poems, so this is something of a shout-out to the source material. The characters use Piglet's scrapbook to reflect back on the time that Kanga and Roo moved into the forest, the expedition to find the "North Pole", and the building of the house at Pooh Corner.
It's all fairly innocuous, and like last night's film, the songs are all performed by one artist, in this case Carly Simon.
Also starring the voices of John Fiedler (last seen in "12 Angry Men", but better known as Mr. Peterson, if you remember the old "Bob Newhart Show"), Kath Soucie, Peter Cullen, Ken Sansom.
RATING: 4 out of 10 crayons
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