The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
Grade: 86
Animated features are often for children only. I had the misfortune once of seeing part of "The Chipmunk Story" and I was only impressed by how incredibly awful that movie was.
But there are exceptions, and "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" is definitely among them. In fact, the film is likely in the top 5% of all movies, unless it doesn't count.
It many not qualify as a genuine movie since it is a compilation of three animated shorts, with only a very small amount of additional footage added to sew the parts together. The shorts are "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree", from 1966, "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day", from 1968, and "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too!" from 1974.
In "The Honey Tree", Winnie the Pooh is foiled in an attempt to raid a bee's nest for honey. He instead visits Rabbit's burrow, where he eats so much honey that he is unable to fit through the exit hole.
In "The Blustery Day", which won an Academy Award for best animated short, Pooh and his friends are caught in a windstorm, then in a flood. The ultimate extravert, Tigger, is also introduced.
There are two versions of this compilation. Both have "The Honey Tree" and "The Blustery Day". They differ in the third short. The better short, which I believe is "Tigger Too", has the following storyline: Rabbit gets lost in the woods, while Tigger gets stuck up a tree. There is a bittersweet ending. This version is the one that I have graded.
The other version substitutes a good, but still inferior short. Eeyore must be rescued from a stream, and Pooh learns a new game called "Pooh sticks".
While the film is targeted at children, the quality is so high that anyone should enjoy it. The voice characterizations are excellent. Sebastion Cabot makes a perfect narrator, and Paul Winchell is an outstanding Tigger. Sterling Holloway has become best known as the voice of "Winnie the Pooh", but had been a voice in several of Disney's great animated features, notably as a singing stork in "Dumbo", and the Cheshire Cat in "Alice in Wonderland". Even the songs are good, which is especially important in animated features.
The writing is funny even to adults, who are clued into how foolish Pooh really is. The characters (Pooh, Tigger, Rabbit, Piglet, Christopher Robin, Owl, Kanga, Roo) are given distinctive and endearing personalities. Clever games are played with the narrator and text pages of the book, paying due homage to original author A. A. Milne.
"Blustery Day" is slightly better than "Honey Tree", which is better than "Tigger Too". But all three shorts are excellent, and much better than most 'serious' films.
kollers@mpsi.net http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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