Butler's Cinema Scene

Pooh, Ewan McGregor

“CHRISTOPHER ROBIN” My rating: C- 

104 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Few moviegoing experiences are as disheartening as the film that aspires to the whimsical and charming but instead falls flat on its boring face.

Welcome to “Christopher Robin,” Disney’s ill-conceived live-action (mostly) fantasy about the adult life of the little boy who used to play with Pooh, Piglet and the other animals in the Hundred Acre Woods.

Unlike last year’s “Goodbye Christopher Robin,” which was a loose biography of Pooh creator A.A. Milne and his son, Christopher Robin Milne, this new effort from director Marc Forster unfolds in an alternative universe in which Milne and the Pooh books don’t exist (although the movie opens with animated versions of the famous book illustrations by E.H. Shepard…so you can be forgiven if you’re confused).

In a prologue little Christopher Robin (his first name is Christopher, his last Robin) says goodbye to his toy companions as he prepares for boarding school.  Pooh and the others — rendered in what appears to be a combination of puppetry and computer effects — are left behind to mourn the loss of their human friend.

In a montage we see the grown Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) meet and marry Evelyn (Hayley Atwell), go off to World War II and become a father to young Madeline (Bronte Carmichael).  By now he’s all but forgotten his childhood companions; he’s up to his neck in troubles as a middle manager at a London luggage company on the verge of bankruptcy. Christopher is so consumed by business woes that he’s alienating his wife and child.

And then one day — tah DAH — Pooh uses a magic portal (in a tree) to come to London to look for his old friend. The harried businessman spends a day back in the Hundred Acre Woods, slowly getting back in touch with his childhood self.

Pooh, Piglet and Eyore

Sounds workable enough. But “Christopher Robin’s” screenplay (it’s credited to five writers) is a leaden affair that finds the usually charismatic McGregor furiously fighting to inject something interesting into banal conversations and situations. Mostly he wanders pointlessly around the forest, at one point falling into a Heffalump trap dug many years before by his younger self.

By virtue of his work  on the J.M. Barrie-inspired “Finding Neverland,” you’d think director Forster would have a better handle on the nexus of adult anxiety, childhood escapism and literary origins.  If only.

Moreover, the design of the “real world” toy characters is off-putting.  Far preferable are the two-dimensional cartoon versions of Kanga, Roo, Owl and the others. (The film’s creators cannily/crassly reference Disney’s animated Pooh films by once again employing Jim Cummings as the familiar voices of Pooh and Tigger.)

There are a few moments of droll amusement provided by Brad Garrett as the voice of the dyspeptic donkey Eeyore. And Tigger’s irrepressible bounciness injects a little energy into some of the duller scenes.

But mostly “Christopher Robin” is a dispiriting drag. Whatever comforts it may offer have more to do with our residual affection for Milne’s creations  (once read, the “Pooh” stories take up residence in our heads and hearts) than with anything unfolding on the screen.

| Robert W. Butler