I’m a big Winnie fan. I grew up watching The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Saturday morning. I’ll be the first to admit I cried when I saw the preview for the “new” movie. In fact I was anticipating it more than the final Harry Potter. Unfortunately, this might have been my downfall. I built it up so big in my head when it didn’t meet my expectations I was thoroughly disappointed.
Let’s start out with what it did well. The animation was beautiful and reminded me of why I love hand-drawn animation over the new computer generated. Although I did catch the subtleties in the different voices for the characters the new talent did quite a good job.
My constructive criticism. The plot mirrored many other films already done including “Pooh’s Grand Adventure”. In fact the main theme was exactly the same, bummer. Next the movie never really fully developed the relationships you feel with the characters in all the other Winnie shows and movies. It was missing those random appearances of gopher. Tigger was barely even in the movie except at the beginning and end. Next, the “film” was only a mere 60 minutes. While this normally would have been perfect since I brought my son he was antsy the whole time and never really got into the movie. This is odd since at home when Winnie comes on he’s glued.
I am willing to give it another chance, but have to say for now 2 thumbs down for this Winnie the Pooh fan.
