BEFORE: Well, I managed to get both movies made about the making of Winnie the Pooh in to the same calendar year, even if they weren't originally released in the same year - this one came out in 2018, and the previous, fact-based one hit theaters in 2017. 11 months apart, but I cut the distance down to about three months. That seems better, one's still fresh in my mind (sort of) when I watch the other one, that should help me compare and contrast.
Isn't it weird when two movie studios make films at the same time, on very similar subjects? The other film about A.A. Milne and the creation of Pooh came from Fox Searchlight, and this one's from Disney, which means now after the recent acquisition deal, Disney might own them both. Ahh, maybe that's why Disney bid so much money for Fox's assets - maybe they were trying to get a hold of the other Christopher Robin movie! Eh, probably not. But you have to wonder about corporate spies and whether one studio will green-light a movie just to compete with another studio's film, and try to jump ahead of the other one's release date.
Peter Capaldi carries over from "Paddington 2" to provide the voice of Rabbit, and one other actor also carries over.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Goodbye Christopher Robin" (Movie #3,118)
THE PLOT: A working-class family man, Christopher Robin, encounters his childhood friend Winnie-the-Pooh, who helps him to rediscover the joys of life.
AFTER: The connection is obvious, following a movie about Paddington, one fictional bear from British kiddie literature, with one about another bear, the famous Pooh bear, and his friends from the 100-Acre Wood.
Now, the first to market isn't always the BETTER film - like today when I was buying my lunch, the guy behind me in line at the deli ordered the fried chicken special, but that's what I always order at this place (though I get it with rice & broccoli, not french fries). I thought that maybe I should tell him off and stick up for myself, since I realized that it was 12:45 and lunch hour was almost over, and there was probably not much fried chicken left in the tray. So I caught the eye of the server that I know best there (he knows I always order the same thing) and I asked for the fried chicken, with rice, and the other guy's order had to WAIT for them to make some fresh fries, so I got the BEST pieces of chicken. I hustled out of there, even paid in CASH to get out faster, because I didn't want to be accused of taking this other guy's order. Hey, if the deli can't manage their orders, or make enough fried chicken to go around, that's not my problem. This guy should not have jumped me in line, so if he missed out on chicken, that was well-deserved.
But in this case, I think the earlier film about Christopher Robin is the better film, even though it doesn't have animated characters that look like stuffed animals. One film was fact-based, and the other appears to be based on the FICTIONAL Christopher Robin, the one in the book, who bears some notable differences from Christopher Robin MILNE, the son of the author. For starters, there's the name thing. "Robin" is the last name of the central character in today's film, and that's just bunk. I don't know if there was some dispute with the Milne estate, or what, but you don't even HEAR the name Milne in the 2018 film, nor is there any mention of Pooh and Piglet and Tigger being characters in a beloved book, which seems a bit odd. Why do they even exist, if they're not characters from "House at Pooh Corner" or the other books? Are they just supposed to be random stuffed animals owned by one boy, who isn't even real? Jeez, even in the superhero films there are also comic books with the superheroes in them...
Next, there's the fact that Christopher's father passes away when he's a teen, and he never sees his son grow up and fight in World War II - yet as I saw in "Goodbye Christopher Robin", A.A. Milne lived through the war, led air raid drills and scrap drives, and waited for news about whether his son would be coming home. Milne lived until 1956, so this is playing pretty fast and loose with the real story - anything to make a buck, that's Disney Co. for you, throw the facts out the window if the fiction makes for a better narrative.
Much like Michael Banks in "Mary Poppins Returns", the fictional Christopher Robin (last name omitted) grows up to have a boring job and seems to have forgotten about what it means to play and have fun, even where his own kid(s) are involved. Christopher's daughter Madeline has inherited his work ethic, and doesn't even know HOW to play on her own. That seems like a bit of a stretch, too - he's forgotten how to have fun, and she never learned? Didn't her mother have any say in her being allowed to have any fun? Oh, I forgot, this was the 1950's and women weren't allowed to disagree with their husbands.
While we're at it, let's sugar coat the life of Christopher Robin, because why get into the fact that he was sent to boarding school, when apparently ALL British boarding schools are horrible (someone should really do something about that...) and he was bullied when the other boys found out he was THAT Christopher Robin? Oh, right, in this fake reality there's no illustrated book about a boy playing, so the other kids wouldn't know enough about him to bully him. Still, I bet they bullied him anyway, because that's what kids do. Umm, did.
But now I've also got to point out that this non-real reality happens to be one in which stuffed animals can talk and move around, or I guess they only do that for ONE boy, who's now a man. So, is he crazy, or delirious, or is this some kind of "Fight Club" situation? That would explain things, but then later on in the film, other people around him can also hear the stuffed animals talk. Good lord, his madness is contagious, and now he's infected his wife and daughter! Whatever he has needs to be contained immediately, he and his family need to be isolated from society.
This is just a head-scratcher all the way around, because why is THIS the fiction that we should choose instead of the reality where an author wrote a book about his son's toys/imaginary friends and that struck a chord with people? Christopher MILNE was the most famous boy in the world at one point, and he wouldn't have to work a dead-end managerial job at a luggage company, where he accidentally invents the idea of paid vacations, just to sell more luggage. (Yeah, right...as if management wouldn't see RIGHT through that.).
The stuffed animals here are supposed to be cute, but they're just not as cute as Paddington - sorry, Winnie. And all of them seem to be head-cases, not one of these animals has got their act together. Eeyore's depressed, that's pretty standard, but I never realized before that ALL of the animals represent some form of psychological condition. Winnie-the-Pooh is very needy and passive-aggressive, he always needs help getting unstuck from the honey pot, or stuck coming out of his hole, or something. God, he's annoying if you think about it. Piglet is always afraid, like he's got a phobia about everything, Owl is a know-it-all and Rabbit is egotistical and also has OCD and Tigger is delusional and delirious. Yeah, the things you don't notice when you're a kid - but the cartoon characters are pretty screwed up.
Also starring Ewan McGregor (last seen in "Jane Got a Gun"), Hayley Atwell (last seen in "Jimi: All Is by My Side"), Bronte Carmichael, Orton O'Brien, Elsa Minell Solak, Mark Gatiss (last seen in "Victor Frankenstein"), Oliver Ford Davies (last seen in "Sense and Sensibility"), Ronke Adekoleujo (last seen in "Ready Player One"), Adrian Scarborough, Roger Ashton-Griffiths (last seen in "The Lobster"), Ken Nwosu, John Dagleish, Amanda Lawrence, Katy Carmichael, Tristan Sturrock, Paul Chahidi, Matt Berry, Simon Farnaby (also carrying over from "Paddington 2"), Mackenzie Crook, with the voices of Jim Cummings (last heard in "Pocahontas 2: Journey to a New World"), Brad Garrett (ditto), Toby Jones (last seen in "The Snowman"), Nick Mohammed (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Sophie Okonedo (last seen in "Aeon Flux"), Sara Sheen.
RATING: 4 out of 10 haycorns
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