A Pooh Without Stuffing

Minus the end credits, 2011's Winnie the Pooh is less than an hour long but watching it felt like an eternity. The writers and directors and animators go to great lengths to imitate the style and tone of Disney's Pooh shorts from the '60s and '70s. It's a complete failure. The original shorts succeeded at capturing some of the delicate beauty of AA Milne's stories, the 2011 film grips tightly and doesn't notice that delicate thing is snapped in half.

Pacing is part of the problem. The filmmakers make the mistake of thinking three year-olds to-day are somehow born with shorter attention spans than three year-olds in the '60s. So the more natural speed of Pooh slowly waddling into frame is lost as well as a sense of weight to the environment. Especially since the original shorts, and the 2011 film, feature gags about Pooh walking around on the pages of his books, it's crucial to get an effective sense of The Hundred Acre Woods as a lived in environment. The old shorts, with their problems revolving around rain and trees and flooding, had a subtle quality suggestive of a real acquaintance with forest animals and the problems they have to deal with. In the 2011 film, when Pooh and Piglet lay a trap for the "Backsoon", it's a picnic blanket over a hole that doesn't dip into the hole. This lack of instinct for the physics of the thing shouldn't matter--it's cartoon logic--but it's part and parcel of a general disconnect from the environment depicted.

The biggest problem is how the low intelligence of the characters is depicted. Comparing the 2011 film to the 1977 anthology illustrates the difference between laughing at folly with affection and laughing with cruelty.

All the voice actors are different, of course, most noticeably Craig Ferguson as Owl. He puts on an English accent to end up sounding just like Rowan Atkinson in The Lion King, a more broadly stuck up character than Owl was before. Travis Oates as Piglet is downright irritating though the movie never holds him in frame very long, his appearances generally being about getting shot through the sky across the woods or enduring quick slapstick gags.

The filmmakers' efforts to reproduce the visual style of the old shorts extends to simulating the xerography animations, that cheaper method employed by Disney on every movie from 101 Dalmatians to The Little Mermaid. So all of the lines are black and occasionally you see rough guidelines pop into frame, though never as badly as in the '60s. And the lines don't get thick and muddy on fur. Black lines are certainly appropriate for imitating the style of ink book illustrations, though. It's the only truly good idea in the movie.

Zooey Deschanel sings new, forgettable songs as well as the Sherman Brothers' theme. I think 2011 was before everyone became suspicious and afraid of manic pixie dream girls so at the time Deschanel probably seemed perfect as someone who normally plays innocent, sweet, and eccentric young ladies. I think that's a perfectly reasonable line of thought but I find her singing voice off-putting in a way I can't put my finger on. Maybe it's just me.

Winnie the Pooh is available on Disney+.

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This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
Fantasia 2000
Dinosaur
The Emperor's New Groove
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Lilo and Stitch
Treasure Planet
Brother Bear
Home on the Range
Chicken Little
Meet the Robinsons
Bolt
The Princess and the Frog
Tangled