For Linnea’s birthday (a couple weeks back) we went out for ice cream with some close friends and then to a movie we had both wanted to see for some time: Christopher Robin.
We are both Winnie-the-Pooh addicts from way back, and our kids are rapidly becoming ones too. We made sure of that early on. It was with no small amount of trepidation that we entered the theater that night. Would something we loved so dearly as children and now as parents be treated respectfully by Hollywood?
We were pleasantly surprised. In fact, this is the best iteration of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends that I have seen since they simply animated the original storyline.
points, points, points
Disney scores points with Pooh-fans for a slew of reasons. They know their audiences – children and adults. The truth of the matter is, children aren’t the ones who buy children’s books and movies. Their parents are. Today’s parents (and over fifty years of parents, actually) grew up with Winnie-the-Pooh in one way or another. It’s a cash cow like none other.
Be that as it may, they take a well-used scenario – mid-life crisis workaholic dad learns his lesson – and freshen it up brilliantly. It takes skill to make an old storyline sing, and this one does. They also mimicked the voice acting of the original 70s film and translated the nostalgic final chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh into live-action word-for-word.
But where the rubber really met the road in this film was when Pooh opened his mouth.
True-to-essence dialogue
I have done some dialogue myself, and it’s not easy. I stand in awe of those writers who can put themselves in a person’s shoes so deeply that they know exactly what that person would say at any given time.
Whoever wrote this script – and I’m sure it rests strongly in the hands of up-and-comer Alex Ross Perry – knows how the characters in the Hundred-Acre Wood talk. The naivety was never pandering, the humility never feigned. Pooh and his friends (particularly Eeyore) spoke hundreds of lines that I could swear were written by A. A. Milne himself. It was genuinely funny, sweet, and tear-inducing at multiple points.
Add in a dash of British actors, beautifully-textured animation and on-location scenery, and a healthy dose of slapstick, and you have a film worthy of its source material.
It was absolutely nothing like the new live-action version of Peter Rabbit that stumbled into theaters early this year.
How to ruin Beatrix Potter for everyone
Peter Rabbit has British actors (James Corden plays Peter), lovely scenery, slapstick action, and nods to the original source material as well. Although… the nods are more like grimaces.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge fan of Beatrix Potter, British actors in general and James Corden in particular. But this film stinks royally, for all the opposite reasons that Christopher Robin comes up roses.
It distances itself from its source material in an obvious attempt at cultural commentary. Instead of wit, it relies on cheap gags and body humor. Its music doesn’t know what decade it’s in. The storyline is hard to find, and when you do you realize you still have no emotional investment in any of the characters. Once or twice you laugh, but mostly you cringe.
In other words, this is not the fresh take on Peter Rabbit that you’re looking for. It’s old and tired precisely because its thoughtless and modern. Its exactly how so many children’s writers and publishers are making their money.
choosing a different way of seeing
The classic nature of A. A. Milne’s stories rely on characters that are truly themselves, set in a world that is truly a child’s world. Winnie-the-Pooh and his counterparts – Beatrix Potter’s friends, the gang of Wind in the Willows, the children of Narnia – are quite different in their composition and direction than the majority of children’s literature available. The authors choose to take the world from a child’s view rather than an adult’s view, and this natural empathy is why they endure. It seems obvious to say it, but children see their world from a child’s point of view. They get too many adult viewpoints on their world as it is. When they find characters who think the same way – they stick with them.
This is where Peter Rabbit missteps. It’s a thoroughly adult movie stamped onto a kid’s format. It’s cynical, but not in a sly or witty way. Because of this, it carries no emotional weight at all. It is the definition of mindless entertainment, but it cost 25 million dollars less to make and made twice what Christopher Robin did at the box office.
Christopher Robin takes its time and does the hard work of establishing a child’s point of view in every shot. Even the adults in the film are viewed from the perspective of a child. The characters at Christopher’s workplace and the people Pooh and his friends encounter in the real world are caricatures. They are silly, generally confused, and just a little thick – but never in a mean-spirited way. This is a child’s perspective, not an adult one, and its one that Christopher gradually realizes by the end of the show – along with the audience.
But this viewpoint doesn’t mean that it doesn’t apply to adults or even our cultural context, not by a long shot. The mantra of the film is that “doing nothing often leads to the very best something,” and signals a surprisingly historical economic paradigm shift – one that is, of course, biblical through and through. This shift is welcome in our current moment too, and it comes about through choosing to see the world through the eyes of a child.
It’s true. You don’t have to pander to current tastes and pop culture to be culturally relevant. You just have to write a good story. And if you do, that story can live beyond you.