Christopher Robin - Some Nostalgia Required

I watched a lot of Winnie the Pooh "content" growing up. I've seen the classic 1960's trio of Disney shorts, the "New Adventures" from the Disney channel in the 90's, Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin, and The Tigger Movie. There was probably also a bunch of kid's literature and toys mixed in there, I was less than 7 when a lot of this happened. Then a chunk of time passed before I saw Winnie the Pooh (2011), and yet another before we got Christopher Robin, arguably the most nostalgic movie of the year.

There's a couple things worthy of note going into this. First of all, I honestly haven't seen any Winnie the Pooh content I would mark as "bad". I thought maybe in viewing some of this older work with a critical eye I'd be more likely to find tremendous fault, but none of the material was bad...just a bit lackadaisical, and often to their benefit. Secondly, most Winnie the Pooh content prefers (but doesn't require) a baseline degree of intertextuality in that it really helps if you're familiar with the characters and setting going in (which is pretty easy since they're all incredibly simple), whereas Christopher Robin only works if you're intimately familiar with the material. Here's a weird case where you can't actually enjoy the film without knowing who all the characters are, why the "red balloon" matters, and what "heffalumps and woosles" are. So, I guess if you're looking for a recommendation, I would start by asking "how much do you know about Winnie the Pooh?", and if your answer is "basically nothing" I would tell you to avoid this film.

The plot is pretty cut and dry: A young boy named Christopher Robin grew up happy playing with his stuffed animal friends in the Hundred Acre Wood, but grew up to be an "all work, no play" grownup at a suitcase company likely as a result of experiencing boarding school, the death of his father, and military service in World War 2. At some point in between, he met and married a woman named Evelynn, and now has a job and a family with her and their daughter. The main conflict comes when Christopher is given a harsh ultimatum - "your department needs to reduce costs by upwards of 20%, even if that means firing people" - and the only way to meet the expectations of this ultimatum is by forgoing a planned family vacation to work extra hard over the weekend. Over the course of these stressful days, he's followed by Pooh, one of the stuffed friends of his childhood, who seems to have lost all his friends. This forces Christopher to return to the place of his youth to help Pooh and also reconnect with the joys (and toys) that he grew up with, eventually leading to him learning how to live in the moment/appreciate what he already has/learn how to enjoy life with the people he loves. You know, a moral that you probably haven't already seen in some form at least a dozen times in other movies (Ray, The Incredibles, Where the Wild Things Are, and several post-2000 Adam Sandler films, just to name a few). And, as expected, his newfound childlike attitude and lesson learned allowed him to find a solution to the company's money problem via an unexpected result. So, with all the set pieces in place, what's the unique conceit of Christopher Robin?

Well, I guess it has Winnie the Pooh and friends in it.

I mean, sure.  Always a fan of these fellas.

Alright, we talked plot, now let's talk story. The goal of Christopher Robin is to show that life requires a healthy balance of work and play, and that sometimes the best moments and ideas in life only happen when you let them and not when you force them. This story is told by having the most problematic elements reflect themselves in Christopher's wants, while having the intended goal take the form of his needs. He wants to work hard because he's sure that doing so will make his family happy and lead to good things, but that line of behavior only leads to stress, general unhappiness, and distancing from his family. What he needs is to learn how to live life to the fullest again, like he did when he was young, and to reconnect with his family as a father and not just a breadwinner. These ideas are reified in the form of Christopher's boss Winslow as the manifestation of his wants, and, well, pretty much everyone/everything else in the movie as the manifestation of his needs. It's all extraordinarily blunt, leaving behind an effective, if somewhat shallow experience.

In a lot of ways, it does feel like a Winnie the Pooh movie though. The dialogue between Christopher and Pooh is ripe with Pooh's classic wonderful misunderstanding and Christopher trying to explain it in a way that would make sense to him, and it's adorable. All the other hundred acre wood characters behave in their normally charming demeanor (I mean who doesn't like watching Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet just doing their thing?), and the story is incredibly simple in the way that most of their stories have been. I was being a bit facetious when I mentioned "having Winnie the Pooh and friends in the movie" as a driving conceit, but truthfully that's enough since these are some of the most beloved characters of many people's childhoods. Simply seeing them in this context allows for a movie that has the ability to resonate with large swaths of people, including me. Despite being fairly standard, the movie still made me smile. I had a good time reliving some nostalgia.

But therein also lies the problem with the film. Just about every other Winnie the Pooh work (by Disney) is able to stand on its own feet, but Christopher Robin requires the lore as a crutch. Without any context, the film still works in the plot and story categories, but sadly the emotional beats never land because they are all rooted in that context. The only way this movie will affect you emotionally is through that meta-textual connection, and while its easy to mistake that for a strength I hold it firmly as a weakness. This film literally doesn't mean anything unless it's through nostalgia, and that's a problem.

At the end of the day, Christopher Robin didn't reach deep enough to scoop that delicious honey. It's a competent film with proper structure and good enough writing, but if you actually want to enjoy it, some nostalgia is required.