Winnie the Pooh: A Very Merry Pooh Year.
You know when you start to watch a movie and you know it’s going to be painful in the first few minutes? That was me with Winnie the Pooh: A Very Merry Pooh Year. Even the title makes me cringe. This one is a double holiday movie, as we get Christmas and New Years. I give them a little credit, you don’t see new year’s in Disney movies but it’s boring and makes for a very long hour.
Pooh and Christopher Robin
So the plot or in this case the plots? This movie has like two dumb stories. First, Pooh and friends are having a Christmas party and then they tell the first story in a Flashback.
That story is Christopher Robin is writing a letter to Santa. He asks everyone what they want and sends the letter via airmail. No, literally he just throws the letter into wind. The next day, Piglet tells Pooh that Pooh forgot to ask for a gift, apparently all that hunny he for asked for the others in case they get guests didn’t count. So they find the letter and make some modifications but Pooh fails to throw the letter in the air. So Pooh tries to play Santa so that everyone gets their gifts which fails too.
So Pooh decides to go to give the letter directly to Santa. The others then realizes that they would rather have Pooh then gifts. Pooh returns having failed again and they are all happy. However Christopher Robin comes and gives out gifts and friends are awesome.
Pooh and Piglet
The second story is not a flashback. Christopher Robin tells Pooh about New Years and Resolutions. Pooh decides to they should have party at Rabbit’s house. Rabbit then gets annoyed with Tigger’s bouncing, Piglet’s fear, Eeyore’s gloom and Pooh’s hunny obsession. So Rabbit decides to move.
Pooh and the gang decide to change these traits but in turn the traits just shift around so Tigger is scared, Piglet bounces, Pooh is gloomy and Eeyore is creepy, I mean hunny obsessed. Rabbit decides to stay because friends are awesome.
Happy Eeyore
Both these stories have the same theme, Friends are awesome. Now I do not claim to be an expert on all thing Pooh but that is a stand-by theme. Friends=Good. Though the second story had the added bonus of the be-yourself theme . Which is another stand-by theme by Disney.
One could say that New Year approach was inventive as the tried to be different but that made them in the polar opposite so the annoying innate traits were not corrected but transferred. I didn’t have a problem with Tigger being scared or Piglet bouncing or Pooh being gloomy. But Eeyore as the cheerful insane Pooh was more than off putting it was down-right terrifying.
Eeyore on the Christmas Tree
When I started doing the sequel reviews, I said wasn’t going to discuss the animation as on the whole the animation is weak in general in the sequels. But the Pooh movies are not sequels, not exactly.
Winnie the Pooh is separate entity under the Mouse label. That being sound the animation was far and away much, much weaker than Pooh’s Grand Adventure. The colors are dull and the animation at times is a bit awkward.
Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger and Pooh
For me, as a not-quite-a-Pooh-fan there is not much to enjoy in Winnie the Pooh: A Very Merry Pooh Year