If I were to speak only for the opening sequence of Christopher Robin, I’d be too busy trying to wipe the tears and snot off my face to say something substantial. It’s easily the biggest ugly cry I’ve had in a while, and it was a sequence that also perfectly captures the singular charms of Winnie the Pooh as a character and pop culture icon. Unfortunately, the rest of the film proceeds to drop the ball.
The basic premise of the film involves Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) struggling to balance a life at home with his wife, Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) and daughter, Madeline (Bronte Carmichael), and his life at work. He is given an assignment to help reduce expenses by 20% or else people will be fired, which forces him to skip his planned getaway with his family, much to their disappointment. He is then suddenly greeted by Winnie the Pooh (Jim Cummings), which triggers a series of events that reunites him with his old friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.
While I was initially hoping to avoid making comparisons to the far superior Paddington films, it becomes necessary to do so because those films do everything Christopher Robin is trying to do, except they do it right. The film has a major problem in tone and properly dramatizing any semblance of conflict. The opening suggests something that is perhaps more somber compared to most family films, but once the opening credits are over, it quickly shifts into fairly standard comedic antics with some awkward physical humor coming from Christopher’s boss, Giles (Mark Gatiss), a character who somehow acts more cartoonish than the very literal CG characters that are bouncing around. It’s not that a shift like this can’t be made, simply look at Pixar’s Up, which opened with one of the most famous tearjerker sequences of all time and somehow brings in dogs flying planes without breaking the reality of the movie. The thing about Up is that it builds well and properly escalates things, whereas Christopher Robin drops any pretense of melancholy and goes for basic family movie plotting and humor.
If director, Marc Forster, who is working off a script by Alex Ross Perry, Tom McCarthy, Allison Schroeder, intended the film to be so lighthearted in its approach, then it’s all undone by the murky visuals, muted color palette, and seemingly handheld camera work, which often ruins the timing of what could’ve been solid slapstick gags. Meanwhile, the two Paddington movies are carefully constructed, vibrant in its colors, and playful with the camera. I just find it hard to enjoy Tigger (also Jim Cummings) bouncing around when he is shot and lit like he’s in a Holocaust movie. The visual language is constantly at odds with what is happening on screen.
The self-importance of the filmmaking is almost equal in the tired story beats, feeling like a relic of the 90s. The whole idea of making a story that paints a father figure in an unlikable manner simply because he is overworked is something that should’ve been retired long ago. Not only is it remarkably simplistic, but it can be actively harmful in painting a dishonest picture of what it means to raise a family in the minds of kids. The film makes Christopher into a near-villain for the first half because of his devotion to getting the work done, which as I mentioned prior, literally has the livelihood of his co-workers at stake if he were to fail. If Steven Spielberg couldn’t make this dynamic work with Hook, then there’s no way Forster can do it here.
Then there’s the whole can of worms that the film opens up by being very unambiguous about the existence of Pooh. Pooh is real in this world, people see and hear him, and also the Hundred Acre Wood is a place that you go into through some kind of…portal? Bringing it back to something like Paddington, where they simply make it clear that there is a talking bear in this world, and you just have to deal with it, this one feels like it has to bend over backwards to explain – or just ignore – certain things in for the sake of various plot conveniences. To quote Batman Forever – it just raises too many questions. It seems to completely miss the fact that the biggest draw for me when it came to Winnie the Pooh was the fact that it was mellow, had little to no stakes, and were simply about having a good time with some sweet, likeable characters. Christopher Robin tries to bring in too many elements and it just doesn’t know what to do with them.
Having said all that, I wouldn’t go as far as to say Christopher Robin was terrible. I might even hesitate to call it bad. Whenever Pooh and his friends were on screen, especially Eeyore (Brad Garrett), they would get a consistent chuckle out of me from their line delivery, even if like 99% of their dialogue is mostly a checklist of quotes from previous Winnie the Pooh films. The performances, overall, are pretty solid. However, it doesn’t quite capture what makes these characters so special, instead throwing them into a largely generic and half-baked film that they can barely muster up the energy to carry. It has its moments of levity, sincerity, and genuine love for the characters, but it seems almost afraid to fully commit to being a melancholic exploration of childhood that it clearly wants to be. You can certainly do worse when it comes to family films, this just stings a bit harder because a lot of it feels like wasted potential.