Mark Reviews Movies: CHRISTOPHER ROBIN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 2, 2018

A.A. Milne's stories about Christopher Robin, Winnie-the-Pooh, and the other inhabitants of Hundred Acre Wood end where Christopher Robin begins. A young Christopher Robin (played by Orton O'Brien) is about to leave for boarding school, so his friends in the forest give him a farewell party. They all say their good-byes, and Christopher Robin, who cannot be identified without using those two names, has a solitary farewell with Pooh, overlooking the wonders of the wood. Pooh promises to never forget the boy. The boy isn't as certain.

Adults know that this final chapter of Christopher Robin's story is about the inevitability of growing up and leaving behind childish matters. After all, the talking stuffed animals and real animals in the forest had been nothing more than figments of a child's imagination, and we're saddened a bit, because we've all gone through that and feel the pangs of nostalgia for a more innocent time in our lives.

Kids know differently and, perhaps, better. Yes, it's unfortunate that Christopher Robin is going away, leaving behind his friends, but it's of little matter to the population of Hundred Acre Wood. They had plenty of adventures without their human companion, who was, after all, only a most-welcome visitor to this place. Pooh and his friends will be sad, to be sure, but their adventures will continue. To a child, Pooh and Piglet and Tigger and all the rest of those characters are as real as they are to the young Christopher Robin.

At first, Christopher Robin, which imagines what happened to the boy as and when he grew up, gives us the adult's vision of that ending. The screenplay by Alex Ross Perry, Tom McCarthy, and Allison Schroeder starts with a storybook montage of Christopher Robin going off to boarding school and soon becoming plain, old Christopher (Ewan McGregor), a young man who meets a young woman, gets married, goes off to war, and returns to London to meet his daughter, who was born while he was away. From there, he's off to work, where he's identified by his surname.

Work becomes his identity, really, especially when the luggage company where he's a manager is facing a budgetary crisis. Costs need to be cut, and if sturdy, old Robin can't figure out a way to get out of the red, people will lose their jobs. Meanwhile, his wife Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) and daughter Madeline (Bronte Carmichael) are disappointed to learn that Christopher won't be able to spend the weekend at his former home in the country. Evelyn, at least, had been expecting it. She didn't even pack his suitcase.

Adults will understand this reality, but kids will almost certainly spend the entirety of this introduction to an older Christopher Robin, with all of the responsibilities of an adult and none of the fun of his younger self, wondering what has become of Pooh and his pals. One can sense that the film, directed by Marc Forster, has arrived at a crossroads of two possibilities. It could embrace either an adult's reality—that Christopher Robin is now Christopher and that Pooh is simply a distant, mostly forgotten memory—or a child's reality—that Christopher needs to learn how to be Christopher Robin again and that Pooh is waiting in Hundred Acre Wood to teach this boring, old man a lesson or two.

There's a certain, joyous confusion in the film's ultimate decision, which is to take the child's perspective. There's Pooh (voice of Jim Cummings), now—like all of his animal friends—a computer-generated creation, in the woods, living out his life of looking for his pals for an adventure and, naturally, for honey to sate his always-present appetite. Pooh is very real in this tale, and so, too, are Piglet (voice of Nick Mohammed), Tigger (also voiced by Cummings), Eeyore (voice of Brad Garrett), and all of the others.

Adults might feel a reflexive desire to reject this notion, because these characters' existence as imaginary entities said something simple yet profound about what it means to grow up. The film doesn't want anything to do that. It would rather find a way to continue the adventures of Pooh and friends in a world in which Christopher Robin, to them, now looks like a fearsome Heffalump and where there's an entire, bustling city in which they can get into some shenanigans.

To suggest that this isn't the "right" move on the film's part might be to miss the purpose of these stories. Yes, they came to an end with a bittersweet conclusion of the acceptance of reality, but there was much more before that ending. There were adventures, and there was silliness. There was friendship, and there were pearls of simple wisdom from Pooh's "little brain."

The film wants to have fun with these characters again, and as we get used to the idea of their new look, we can hardly blame Forster and company for that basic desire. It is quite a bit of fun to watch the perpetually innocent Pooh try and constantly fail to blend in as a regular teddy bear, because he's just too polite not to greet anyone he meets. It's fun to have a reunion with these characters, whose quirky personalities haven't changed a bit, even though their voices might sound just a little different from the earlier films.

There's a genuine sense of the bitterness leaving that famously bittersweet finale, as Christopher re-learns what's really important in life—friends and family and, well, just having a bit of fun every once in a while. Christopher Robin sees what an adult vision of Milne's stories could be, and it simply says, "No, thank you."

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