Film Review: Christopher Robin

Director: Marc Foster

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Bronte Carmichael

Running time: 104 mins

I came into the film with one, arguably modest, assumption for a film of its plot – that it would be a tear-jerker, even for those with the most hardened of hearts. Its story, after all, was unpretentious and humble, not original by any means (the same plot as Hook), but a wholesome tale enabling us to think back to the simpler times of our childhood, lead by the hand by our old friend Winnie the Pooh. With my own popular culture interests steeped in nostalgia, I thought this film had a perfect arsenal of tools at its disposal to reduce me to a tearful wreck.

The film began with Christopher Robin, as a child, having a farewell tea-party with his 100-acre wood friends Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Roo, Kanga, Rabbit and Owl, as he was about to go to boarding school. The film centres around Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) as an adult, who works at a financially precarious suitcase manufacturing company, where he is the man who must come up with a solution to save the business, by any means necessary. His young daughter and wife (Hayley Atwell) feel second best due to his dedication to his work. When they are on a weekend trip without him - as he has agreed to work instead of joining them for a long-awaited break at his childhood holiday cottage - Pooh emerges through a door in a tree into the city where Christopher is working. The bear had woken up to find the wood deserted and gloomy, with his friends absent, and knew only his old friend Christopher Robin could help him.

The opening scene in which a young Christopher Robin says goodbye to Pooh was remarkably brisk in its duration and felt even more so due to its lack of impact.  I didn’t feel the child actor was sincere and innocent enough to convey the sadness and regret he feels for leaving Pooh for boarding school, but this could be a fault with the script and director as much as the actor. If these issues weren’t there, this scene could have been the emotional lynchpin of the whole film, that lingered in the audience’s mind when comparing how Christopher Robin acts towards Pooh as a miserly adult. Pooh is discovered by an adult Christopher Robin, who reluctantly agrees to find his friends, venturing into the 100-acre wood once again.

My main grievance with the film is that it doesn’t linger on whimsicalness. Much of the film takes place outside the wood itself, and any magical intrigue is dashed as soon as it is introduced – the sounds of the feared heffalump within the wood are debunked by Christopher Robin as a rusty weather vane, and only then does he thaw slightly and humour his friend’s fears by enacting a winning battle with the heffalump. Most of the time while in the wood he is knocked out in a puddle of water, and we never do find out if the heffalump is real, or if the unusual gloominess of the wood was a supernatural threat or a banal quirk of the weather. These seemingly childish trivialities are left unanswered, and the film ploughs on with the more mundane plot thread of saving the suitcase business.

The story seems to want to moralize, at least by the dialogue’s assertions, that if you’re not careful in life, you can lose sight of the simple joys of living, joys that were easily appreciated when you were a child. Oddly, it also had another message that was arguably at odds with the film you expected - the humble phrase uttered by Pooh bear that ‘to do nothing leads to something’ was construed into some real-world economical plan which Christopher Robin used to save his suitcase manufacturing business from financial collapse at the end of the film. His jubilation was presented as if saving the business was the crux of the story, and what we should be most relieved about – as opposed to him recapturing his child-like ability to appreciate the small joys in life. It seemed as if he had learned only to twist Pooh’s innocent world-view into something that could be used to his advantage in the harsh real world. Perhaps this was this film’s attempt at saying a balance can be found between childishness and adult responsibility, one where neither is endangered - however this wasn’t how I felt it was communicated, when looking at the entire film’s lack of indulgence in anything too childish.

Putting my Eeyore-like cynicism aside, I enjoyed the characterization of Winnie the Pooh himself, who had mercifully not been a victim of the film’s inattention to detail and seeming reluctance to dwell or indulge in sentiment. He was characterized much like in the classic A.A Milne stories, as a bear of very little brain, uttering simple and unintentional pearls of wisdom, lumbering around Christopher Robin’s world in an absent-minded bubble of adorableness. My favourite scene involved Pooh eating honey and obliviously stepping in it, then getting sticky footprints all over Christopher’s house. Eeyore was a favourite of the audience, his relentless pessimistic comments and woe-is-me demeanour providing a dose of comedy. Tigger was characterized identically to the Disney animation carnation, but the other creatures featured so-little it’s hard to comment on their characterization or impact. It felt like this film scarcely had the time to linger on anything with any wistful consideration.

I apologize for my Eeyore-like cynicism, but I truly did want to enjoy it more than I did.

Did you know? The film was denied release in China, as Chinese citizens have drawn comparisons between Winnie the Pooh and Chinese leader Xi Jinping since mid 2017.

Christopher Robin is screening at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 30 August