I had some reservations about seeing Christopher Robbin — the 2018 Disney film about the adult version of Christopher Robbin. It wasn’t the casting as I’m a big fan of Ewan McGregor and Hayley Atwell. I heard some early reviews weren’t so hot and I’m not the biggest Winnie the Pooh fan. I never read A. A. Milne, so I’m only familiar with some of the old Disney animated shorts from the 1960s and 1970s. Lily wanted to see the film and some friends invited us to go see it. In the interest of family togetherness, I went along.
Directed by Marc Forster, the live-action film is about the fictional Christopher Robbin having eventually gone away to border school, fighting in the British infantry during WW II, getting married, and grown up into middle age. He’s now working as an efficiency expert at a British luggage company, overworked and ignoring his wife and young daughter. Oh he’s also very focused on work and sorts full.
Faced with the pressures of looming job cuts at the office, and a disintegrating marriage, he skips spending a week away with his family at his old country home. Marriage-wise, it looks bad. Somehow, Pooh walks through a hole in a tree and reappears in a park outside Christopher Robbins’ home. Christopher finds him and hijinks ensue as he tries to hide Pooh while returning him to the 100 Acre Woods. We eventually meet the rest of the gang.
The story then turns from PG to G as hijinks continue. The gang meet his daughter, there is a whole thing about adults in London doing the “Is that a talking tiger?” schtick, saving people’s jobs, the weaselly luggage company owner’s son getting his comeuppance, the Robbins family pulling together, etc.
It was okay but all of the kids like it. It’s a decent children’s film.
