Nothings can turn out to be somethings. I was hoping that would be the case when I watched the Christopher Robin movie. After all, I was not expecting anything much. I hoped the movie would be entertaining and uplifting, as in which it would leave something of a good impression on my blank canvas of a mind.
The movie was good enough not to disappoint, but it left me feeling kind of ‘meh’ in a sweet sort of way.
Though I saw @hanshotfirst’s movie review last week, I purposely did not read his post before watching the movie. That way, last week remained last week and I could enjoy today for today (today being yesterday, the day my children dragged me to this flick). Upon completing that viewing, I did read Han’s movie review, which delivered the clear impression that this tough movie critic very much liked the film.
I hate to disagree with him, but disagreeing is another way of agreeing. To get where we are going, shall we start by going? I find that the process of arriving at a destination often begins with departing from the departure point.
Let’s deal with the Heffalump in the room first. How much of this movie’s charm came from Winnie the Pooh nostalgia and charming bear-of-little-brain wit for those of us who grew up (or whose children grew up) reading and watching Pooh? In Christopher Robin, the moviemakers laid on the Poohness like a thick coat of honey. The Pooh character was cute, really cute, and so were his 100 Acre friends. He issued a constant stream of Poohisms that seemed to fit each scene in the film.
For anyone who loved Pooh as a child and/or parent, it was a full-on fan flick. The theater where I saw it even had two plants in the audience. Really. You know how comedy clubs have a few people who peel off insane canned laughter at every bad joke? I am not kidding that this movie theater had two people hysterically laughing at every Pooh line and reference.
And yet, I must subtract the general Poohishness in order to get at the heart of the Christopher Robin movie because as @hanshotfirst demonstrated in his post, a thick coat of honey can corrupt even a good reviewer. Beyond the honey and fluff, I was looking for the heart of this movie. Did it have one?
Yes, it did. And the heart was: Mary Poppins. I could still read the writing on it from back then.
Correct. I said that Mary Poppins was at the heart of the Christopher Robin movie. In the theater where I watched Christopher Robin, they showed previews for coming attractions and there was one for “Mary Poppins Returns,” which I believe is due in theaters next year. But we didn’t need that because we have Christopher Robin.
Good luck remaking the Mary Poppins classic or following it with a slick sequel decades later. Disney, you won’t come close to touching what may be the finest children’s movie of all time. The strange thing was that the preview of this coming attraction didn’t look like a Mary Poppins flick. Until I saw her umbrella’ed silhouette descending on London in that upskirt preview, I thought the first part of the trailer suggested yet another regurgitation of the Peter Pan theme.
But it’s the same heart that they keep on using.
To be sure, we can throw them all together: Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, and Christopher Robin. We won’t blend them like a soup, but we’ll chop them coarsely and toss them together like a salad. See which colors shine through. There’s some black, some navy blue, candy apple red, and plenty of brown.
Why, we’re in industrial London! I can taste the coal grit from the chimneys and a hint of coconut-scented sunscreen from Neverneverland. Some 100 Acre honey and a spoonful of sugar will help that medicine go down. Pin the tail on the crocodile (I mean, donkey). How far we have come since Dickens wandered these streets picking our pockets? Now we sail above them with umbrellas, balloons, and fairy dust. Christopher Robin even jumps in a taxicab and trades the navy blues for that exciting brown beige of a new generation all stoked about building the postwar world. Who needs the red-white candy stripe for fun when you can have nut brown?
And yet, subtracting the umbrellas, balloons, and fairy dust leaves us with: a story about parents with hats who have lost their way and must learn to be kids again. It was for the overworking dad in Mary Poppins. It was for Wendy’s hard-ass dad in Peter Pan and again for Wendy and her kid once she had grown up and they sequeled her in Return to Never Land. And so it was as well with Christopher Robin.
At its heart, this was a redemptive, feel good, family movie about the dad who works too damned hard and treats his child like she is meant to be seen and not heard. In other words, there was a rat bastard with a clear track record of having been a kid, as evidenced here by Pooh and all his imaginative friends from the 100 Acre Wood. Christopher Robin thunk them up, so he wasn’t born a square. He just became one because he worked for a nut brown luggage company that had lost its acorns.
He forgot he had a child. And that a child needs to play. And he wasn’t paying his lovely wife much attention either. I thought she’d threaten to boot him earlier, but it took her half the movie. Fortunately, Pooh came and saved the day. Or more properly, Pooh provided the spark and the one-liners that shaped a clueless Ben Kenobi and prompted him to discover life on his own planet. Christopher effectively became a kid again and it was alright from then on.
We’ve seen this heart before and it’s been recycled from previous Disney flicks. Wash it as they try, that heart still has ‘Mary Poppins’ written on it.
Families leave the movie theater feeling good about Christopher Robin and good about the world. This is healthy, because people leave other movies wanting to mate with or shoot one other. Here, the bigger danger, as any dentist will tell you, is eating too much honey. Honey sales should experience a sharp uptick in sales after this movie, at least until the Mary Poppins sequel comes out, after which the same mortals will be guzzling sugar again by the spoonful. It feeds the same vicious cycle, since Disney secretly owns the toothbrush companies and the company that makes Dole Whip-flavored medicine. The Neverland croc is counting the time until they can’t find any more fresh content and are forced to think up yet another angle on the Peter Pan story. I know, next time, let’s bring the dad along for a ride!
Verdict on the Christopher Robin movie: Kind of ‘meh’, but with a coating of honey that left me feeling all warm and sticky outside.
(Pictures are from these three movies: Christopher Robin, Mary Poppins, and Peter Pan. Disney; they're all Disney.)