Ewan McGregor stars as the gorwn up Christopher Robin in this latest adventure starring Pooh and friends. Love London Love Culture rounds up the reviews…
The Guardian: ** ” For all the expensive honey drizzled over this script, Forster’s film is just unpersuasively weird for an hour, before it tails off in the softest of focuses.”
The Telegraph: *** “it is hard to suss out exactly who this live-action, postwar-set sequel to Disney’s Winnie-the-Pooh animations is for. The story is adult-centric, but ostensibly aimed at children, like a remake of Mary Poppins that spends most of its time at the Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs Fidelity Fiduciary Bank.”
The FT: *** “The story is cleverly worked. There are good knockabout turns from Piglet (Nick Mohammed) and Tigger (Cummings again, channelling Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz).
Irish Times: ** “A measured uplift arrives when, for no satisfactory reason, Pooh arrives in the park opposite Christopher’s home. He brings tonal confusion with him.”
The Independent : *** ” Some of the dialogue is witty and surprisingly poignant. Whether the ideas come via Milne or from screenwriters Alex Ross Perry, Tom McCarthy and Allison Schroeder, the script has a resonance you don’t expect in a summer family movie.”
Empire: ** “The tone, therefore, veers oddly between some genuinely delightful scenes of Robin rediscovering a sense of whimsy with Pooh, oddly downbeat, almost NeverEnding Story-tinged segments hunting Pooh’s vanished friends, and manic bits with all the animals of the Hundred Acre Wood gathered together.”
Rolling Stone: *** “sometimes, when Christopher Robin hits you with a perfectly gentle ribbing or drops an image of McGregor and Pooh sitting together on a log — so much depends on a red balloon glazed with magic-hour light beside the star of Trainspotting — it’s more than enough.”
The Times: * “Men. Are you working too hard? Is the boss a brute? Are home pressures getting you down? It sounds as if you need the Christopher Robin treatment!”
Radio Times: ** “Given that Disney’s familiar versions of AA Milne and EH Shepard’s characters are much loved to begin with, there might surely have been a case here for a blend of live-action and regular 2D animation – in the vintage style of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.”
The Upcoming: **** “It may stumble in its conventional storytelling methods, but the movie has plenty of heart, sincerity and nostalgia that make this return journey to the Hundred Acre Woods feel like revisiting some old (and adorable) childhood friends.”
The Metro: **** “The schmaltz potential is sky-high but director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Monster’s Ball) doesn’t lay on the honey too thick. Indeed, it feels like there’s a more interesting grown-up film trapped inside a formulaic family flick. The script throws out some utterly disarming one-liners and the animation is entirely enchanting.”
Christopher Robin is in cinemas now.