Winnie the Pooh

Let's assuage some fears regarding the new Winnie the Pooh movie right up front. No, it isn't computer animated. It wasn't shot in 3-D. It doesn't feature celebrity voice cameos from Seth Rogen or Jim Carrey or Angelina Jolie. At no point does Pooh rap or tell Christopher Robin to "chillax," and it doesn't end with the cast singing and dancing to a Beyoncé song. It is very much like the cartoons you remember from childhood: simple, unassuming and twee as all hell. It doesn't launch fart jokes at you, and it won't make you weep. In other words, it's a bit of an anachronism. Then again, that was true of 1977's The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Disney's original feature-length adaptation. The world the franchise inhabits hasn't changed since the 1920s, when author A.A. Milne created the characters, and this film—the first since Pooh's Heffalump Movie in 2005—is no different. It's so old-fashioned, its narrative device is framed around the reading of an honest-to-goodness, paper-and-ink book. A friggin' book!

Was there a need for a new Pooh movie in 2011? Not really. And that's probably the worst thing anyone can say about Winnie the Pooh. For a barely hourlong picture aimed at the youngest of moviegoers, it's fine. It has a nice, plain-spoken moral about putting the needs of others before your own (if one wants to give it a more political interpretation, there's also a message about not allowing ignorance to invent boogeymen and lead us into our own sandtraps…but that's probably just incidental). It's hand-drawn, with two of those classic, surreal Disney sequences that make you wonder if the animators were smoking opium. It's even adult-funny in spots; there's an exchange of "Who's on first?"-style wordplay that's more clever and fun than it should be. It just never justifies its existence, and that makes all its positives feel like a waste. A traditional animated film with no poop gags or obnoxious voice casting or incongruous song-and-dance numbers set to modern pop hits is rare these days—so why does this one have to be squandered on antiquated characters who, frankly, were never that appealing to begin with? Oh, bother. G.

62 SEE IT: Winnie the Pooh opens Friday at Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Bridgeport, City Center, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Tigard, Wilsonville and Sandy.

WWeek 2015