October was a bit more packed than I anticipated, so apologies for the late review but I did not have the chance to really watch anything, when that happens I think it is just easiest to put on a comfort movie, a movie that might not be great, it might not even be good, but you have watched it so many times, and every time you do it just brings you a certain amount of joy that not even your favourite movies really match, easily my favourite comfort movies are The Muppet Chirstmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island, but I think I should talk about a movie prior to the 1980s, not that I have not looked at any movie from before that time this year, but it has been leaning more towards more recent movies, movies from 1990 onwards, so I figured today, let's take a look at one of my other favourite comfort movies, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which I do have to call it that to distinguish it from the 2011 movie, simply titled Winnie the Pooh, is an interesting movie in the Disney Animated Canon. Technically, this qualifies as a package film. Disney's package films were mostly part of their war-time era output, where the films did not really have much of a narrative and were just a bunch of shorter films and ideas strung together. I've looked at two of these movies prior, The Three Caballeros sort of qualifies as it is kind of a similar idea, but does have some semblance of a central theme, of course the first movie I reviewed for this blog was also one of the package films, Fun and Fancy Free, neither of those movies were great, but not absolutely awful. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a compilation of the three Winnie the Pooh shorts released prior, "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree", "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day", and "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too". I'll talk about each short briefly before talking about the big picture as a whole.
Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree is the classic Pooh bear story, Pooh wants honey, he can't get honey, he goes to have lunch with Rabbit and plugs up his doorway. I think this is the story everyone is familiar with. A couple interesting things to note is that Piglet is nowhere to be seen in this story. Rather, a new character, Gopher, is introduced, not being from the original books. Regardless, it is still a cute little story. This is followed by Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, which is also a cute story and we are introduced to Piglet, Tigger and the Heffalumps and Woozles in this short. It is also a more memorable short with Tigger's introduction jungle, the Heffalumps and Woozles nightmare and Piglet flying like a kite. I do think that Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too is the weakest of the shorts, I dunno I just remember not liking it as much as a kid. Maybe it was just that I didn't like seeing people be sad, I dunno. I like the start of it with Rabbit trying to lose Tigger in the woods, only to end up being lost himself, but still, this is probably my least favourite short of the three.
In between shorts are, I'm assuming new segments to tie them together. These are mostly with Pooh and the narrator talking. These are actually quite cute little bits of fourth-wall breaking. There is also the ending, which isn't some big song number or major emotional moment. It is still an emotional moment, but it is a more subtle one, one that isn't really direct about how the audience should be feeling. Is it a sweet moment between Pooh and Christopher? Is it a sad moment? Is it both, is it neither? I think moments like this are important for children's films because emotions are complex, so it is important to know that it is okay to not know how you feel, or how you're supposed to feel. While I don't think it is one of the best endings to a Disney movie, Monsters Inc. still has my vote for that, I can say it is a good one.
I think what really makes this movie work though is that, it is just a nice warm, fuzzy, comfortable watch. It's not like there aren't any major stakes, but the major stuff does not last for very long, and it resolves satisfactory, this movie is not an episode of Arthur or one of the Franklin specials, it doesn't have major emotional issues that the characters have to deal with, but it's not all sugary-fluff minor issues either. I brought this up before, but the characters do have to be believable for the plot, like you wouldn't see Winnie the Pooh deal with the sensitive topic of Cancer, and it felt really weird that they used the characters to discuss the topic of Stranger Danger. The conflicts in this movie do seem like conflicts these characters are more fit to deal with. On top of that, the characters are just so comforting to watch, they mostly embody one trait, Eeyore is pessimistic, Owl is narcissistic, Piglet is timid, but these characters work of each other so well. It's kind of like Fraggle Rock, on their own the characters are fine, but they work the best when they're together. It also helps that their voices are perfectly cast, no offense to Jim Cummings, but Sterling Holloway and Paul Winchell will always be Pooh and Tigger in my mind.
To top it all off is the animation and music. This was the era where Disney's art style looked a bit sketchier, and while I can see some people not liking it too much, I think this is the movie where the style works the best. It looks like an animated children's book, which is perfect because this movie is pretty much an animated children's book. plus the colours are easy on the eyes, there are not too many animation errors, and while there is reused animation, and it is pretty obvious, it isn't egregious, the worst example is the reversed animation during the ballet dance part of the Heffalumps and Woozles sequence. Speaking of which, the songs in this movie are wonderful, I mean, they're Sherman Brothers songs, and these guys pretty much laid the groundwork for modern Disney musicals. Alan Menken, Elton John and Tim Rice, Lin-Manuel Miranda, they're all continuing a path that the Sherman Brothers refined.
So while I can't argue that The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is one of the greatest movies in the animated canon, I mean when you're putting it up to movies like Beauty and the Beast, The Fox and the Hound, Treasure Planet, Encanto and Fantasia, yeah, it is not going to hold much water, but I don't think it wants to. I think this movie was what it was, a cute and charming little movie that everyone can get behind. It's simple enough for children, but has some subtle complexities that adults can really get into. I mean, there are people who could talk about the complex simplicity and the simple complexities of Winnie the Pooh, heck, someone wrote an entire book explaining Taoism through Winnie the Pooh. It's hard to not really recommend this movie, I do consider it mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to go into art, animation, filmmaking or storytelling, so while it is not an exceptional movie, I do think it is a worthwhile one.
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