Ewan McGregor.
“Christopher Robin,” the latest high-concept offering from Disney's dream factory, begins at the end of childhood but fails to capture the magic of make-believe. It purports to take issue with post-World War II corporate culture, but its jabs are feeble and toothless. It reintroduces English author A.A. Milne's beloved Hundred Acre Wood characters as impressively tactile CGI effects, but the writer's disarming charm eludes this molasses-paced quest to find one's own inner child.
The first misstep director Marc Forster takes is to show the digitally rendered Winnie the Pooh and his friends right off the bat, thus depriving the viewer from a sense of discovery. As the movie opens, the talking plush animals come together for a tea party to bid farewell to its boarding school-bound the titular character. The production values are polished, the strong voice cast, led by the esteemed Jim Cummings as the voice of both Pooh and bouncy, pouncy Tigger, is on point. What's missing is the playfulness that captured readers' (and viewers') hearts through the years since the first Pooh book was published back in 1926.
Hayley Atwell, Ewan McGregor.
In its place is a turgid melancholy that aims to tug on the heartstrings but instead lulls the viewer into indifference, if not slumber. In Cliffs Notes fashioned, Forster traces Christopher's unhappy days as an aloof student, then as a soldier putting his life on the line during WWII. He meets Evelyn (Hayley Atwell, who ought to have known better), the woman who would become his wife, but for a movie that's this slowly paced, it's awfully intent in glossing over the couple's courtship. Kudos to the filmmakers, however, for showing Evelyn “going it alone” while her husband is off fighting for the Crown.
And so Christopher, played as an adult by the versatile Ewan McGregor, is stuck in a job he despises, as the efficiency manager for a luggage company. His supervisor (a smarmy Mark Gatiss), the son of the company's owner, is etched in broad strokes as an uncaring bureaucrat who tasks McGregor's disillusioned pencil pusher with finding a way to make cuts or risk losing his staff. The challenging endeavor means missing out on a trip to the country with Evelyn and their daughter Madeline (Bronte Carmichael).
Ewan McGregor.
In a particularly dispiriting scene, Christopher shows he's become a distant figure in his daughter's life. Like much of “Christopher Robin,” their conversation lacks seasoning. It's generic stiff-upper-lip banter meant to convey the disconnected parent's midlife crisis, but instead layes bare the screenplay's nondescript attempts at character development.
Which makes it even more astonishing that Oscar winner Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight”), the gifted Alex Ross Perry (“Listen Up Philip”) and Allison Schroeder (“Hidden Figures”) share screenwriting credits (and the blame). It may have sounded good on paper to combine these talents, but the results bear the earmarks of too many cooks in the kitchen. The film careens haphazardly from kid-friendly scenarios to drippy self-analysis.
Bronte Carmichael.
The latter aspect comes into play after Pooh, in despair over being unable to locate his Hundred Acre Woods buddies, finds himself, through a lazy bit of movie magic, in Christopher's London neighborhood. The movie wisely does away with the “I must be going mad” denial pretty quickly, which showcases its strongest asset: It makes no bones about Milne's animated stuffed animals being real. There are no coy pretensions in sight, no cutesy scenes that show only Christopher can see his former playmates.
And yet the movie does nothing inventive with this storytelling wrinkle. Pooh's fish-out-of-water shenanigans, like much of the rest of this water-logged tale, remain frustratingly pedestrian and earthbound. For instance, Forster is all thumbs when Christopher buys Pooh a red balloon. Compare the uninspired mise en scène here with the bountiful sight gags in Paul King's “Paddington” movies, and you get an idea of what “Christopher Robin” could have been like with a more creative director at the helm.
Ewan McGregor.
But Forster, who covered similar subject matter more effectively in “Finding Neverland,” seems to be stuck in neutral. He turns Pooh into a New Age therapist in order to help snap Christopher out of his stupor. With a gloomy Hundred Acre Wood as backdrop, the duo's heart-to-heart is at the center of this sincere, soggy misfire. Call it Merchant Ivory's “Hook,” only that filmmaking team would have most likely been able to immerse viewers in the period. Alas, Christopher's soul searching here feels too contemporary. The film's existential bent in these scenes is admirable, but it yields little insight on the protagonist's demons, and also relegates Evelyn and Madeline to the back burner, at least until some eleventh-hour intrigue that shows Forster tying to jump-start his poky narrative, to little avail.
Bronte Carmichael, Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell.
The question arises: Who was “Christopher Robin” made for? It attempts to encompasses several cross-generational demographics, but it's too deliberately paced for younger viewers and too Romper Room for grown-ups raised on Winnie the Pooh stories (and movie appearances). Forster has made a trip down memory lane dunked in formaldehyde, one destined to become in-flight entertainment for harried Wall Street types eager to feel better about themselves. It's a nicely photographed game of period dress-up that's all dressed up with no place to go.
“Christopher Robin” is playing in theaters across Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
