22. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

Between 1966  and 1974, Disney released three animated shorts based on A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. In 1977, they decided to combine these shorts together into one full length feature, the aptly titled The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The last full length animated feature Walt Disney had any involvement in before his death, his presence is felt in this heart warming family classic, which manages to capture some of the Disney magic that has been missing in the last couple features we’ve looked at.

Winnie the Pooh once again uses the xerography technique for animation, but thankfully, it manages to put a fresh spin on things that has been sorely needed; the lines are still a little scratchy and rough, but have been mostly refined and softened out as much as possible to suit the movie’s tone. The style works well with the more simplistic designs of most of the characters, the animation itself is always good and in some instances – particularly in the very lively and, appropriately, bouncy animation of Tigger – it’s great. The backgrounds are similarly basic and stylised, they are simple, but elegant, their rough style effectively communicates the idea that the characters exist within a storybook and, in my opinion, it captures the similarly scratchy illustrations of E.H. Shepard from the original books very well. The film has a lot of very nice colours, interesting little attentions to detail and overall is just very nice to look at, it really is like reading a living picture book, the images don’t leap off the page, but rather, it feels like they are moving within the pages itself – the book and all its characters feel really alive.

‘Tigger do you really have to tackle me and introduce yourself every time we see each other?’

‘Hi, Pooh! I’m Tigger!’

‘Son of a bitch, Tigger.’

The film has no real story, a necessary result of it being a collection of three previously independent shorts, however, it does do a very good job of tying the film together through a number of new scenes which leads each short into the next and a new short is added to the end to round the movie out. This is done very effectively, this movie is much more tied together than Robin Hood, for example and that’s a movie that’s supposed to just have one, singular plot line rather than three different stories it had to tie together; the shorts certainly all exist independently, but thankfully are all good in their own right and the idea that the film is a storybook being read by a narrator means that the transitions between each short never feel awkward or distracting. There’s not much more to say about it really, I suppose if I had to choose a favourite individual short it would be Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too but they’re all quite good and the final one is very sweet and poignant as well, ending the film on a surprisingly mature and melancholy note about the finite nature of childhood and the fact that one day we all must grow up.

The characters are, of course, classic, everyone knows these guys, what do I really have to say? Bumbling and absent-minded, but well-intentioned and friendly Pooh, anxious and adorable Piglet, energetic and fun-loving Tigger, pompous and often humourously mistaken Owl, melancholy and pessimistic Eeyore, long suffering and overly polite Rabbit... they’re all pretty loveable. They are pretty simple characters, Kanga, Roo and Christopher Robin in particular really don’t have anything interesting about them, but to be fair they aren’t around for that much of the film. I also never really cared for Gopher, who I find a little annoying and Tigger can be obnoxious at times in Disney’s attempts to make him the big breakout member of the cast (Hey, they pretty much succeeded!) but he never becomes The Hooter or anything and he’s usually pretty likeable. My favourite character is Rabbit, the poor guy just suffers so much just from trying to be a nice guy, I like how much Pooh takes advantage of his hospitality and yet without even really knowing he’s doing so, he’s so naive he just thinks Rabbit’s happy to give him all his food even though he’s very clearly trying to give Pooh hints, it’s great. I also like that Rabbit starts off in his first appearance as rather grounded compared to most of the other characters, if a little neurotic, but after a film of having to deal with Pooh, Tigger and Owl he finally snaps and just loses it, it’s great. Again, the storybook theme is very present with this colourful and memorable cast of classic storybook characters.

Rabbit admiring Pooh’s ass 

(This isn’t even really out of context or anything, that’s actually just what he’s doing) 

The music is very nice; the score in particular is always very good and effective, incorporating rearrangements of many of the songs with original music to match each moment perfectly. The songs themselves are presented a little differently here, most of them just being little tunes the characters sing every now and again, rather than big musical numbers. Though there are a few too many of these cutesy little songs – Pooh sings about four in the first ten or fifteen minutes – most of them are pretty good, the opening song “Winnie the Pooh” itself is, of course, very memorable and such a great little tune that at this point it’s probably impossible to picture Pooh without hearing it. The best song is “Heffalumps and Woozles”, which is highly reminiscent of “Pink Elephants on Parade” – okay, so it’s ENTIRELY reminiscent of “Pink Elephants on Parade” – with its surreal imagery, bright colours, dark but jaunty rhythm and playful lyrics. The whole sequence is great, it’s just so fun to watch and listen to, the whole thing calls Dr. Seuss to mind, particularly in its lyrics, which utilise near-nonsense words to make fun and interesting rhymes. This fits much better than “Pink Elephants on Parade” in Dumbo, which really didn’t fit into the story or style of the movie whatsoever and was just there as an excuse for the animators to have some fun; while “Heffalumps and Woozles” is just as random, it fits much better into a segmented movie like Winnie the Pooh, which combines a number of different disconnected side stories. Either way, “Heffalumps and Woozles” is great fun and pretty undoubtedly the best part of the movie; even if it is pretty much exactly the same as “Pink Elephants on Parade” in every way it can be, there’s not many better sequences it could have copied.

Pink Heffalumps on Parade

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is definitely a film for young children, it’s very sweet and kind and soothing, but also rather simplistic; I don’t wish to take anything away from it, as it is a good film, but there’s not much for an adult to sink their teeth into. The art style and animation of the movie are really nice and some sequences like “Heffalumps and Woozles” are so great they transcend any age barriers, but on the whole, the film is definitely for kids. That’s not to say that adults can’t enjoy it, in fact I find it difficult to imagine anyone not enjoying this at least on some level, no matter their age, but it keeps things relatively light and straightforward in order to serve its storybook theme. Still, Winnie the Pooh does manage to inject a well needed shot of creativity into Disney’s animation and it creates a very memorable world and cast of characters; after several films featuring an animation style that started to lose its charm pretty quickly and two disappointing features, Winnie the Pooh manages to restore a little bit of that Disney magic – it’s not a great movie, but it was a necessary one. 

6.5/10

Next Week: The Rescuers!

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