The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh 1977

[7.7/10] The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is adorable. It doesn't aspire to be much more than adorable. But that’s okay, because it does what it does so well, so delightfully, that I’m hard-pressed to care about whatever it is the movie might theoretically be missing besides.

True to its title, Many Adventures is less an overarching story and more a series of gentle, amusing vignettes about the titular stuffed bear and his friends in the Hundred Acre woods. Even within the different “chapters” of the book-qua-film, which are ever so slightly more cohesive, there’s less cause and effect than there is some continuity of events or background that loosely tie each adventure together. What really binds the movie together is its engrossing art, its sweet kid logic, and its friendly, silly cast of characters.

Each embodies some simplified but endearing trait or personality quirk. Pooh himself is a dopey little glutton whose hunger for honey is only matched by his oblivious sweetness. Rabbit is his polite but uptight neighbor, honor-bound to treat Pooh with hospitality but worn to his wits end by the silly old bear’s mishegoss. Piglet is a sweet but timid pal, lithe enough to blow away in the wind but generous enough to give his house away to a friend in need.

Tigger is an overactive, fickle, wannabe fearsome creature who moves like he really is made of rubber and springs. Eeyore is a down-in-the-dumps donkey who’s pessimism keeps pace with his persistence and a stiff upper lip about it all. Owl is a chuckle-worthy blowhard packing weird stories about his country cousins. Kanga and Roo are full of motherly encouragement and youthful exuberance respectively. And Gopher...well...Gopher has a lisp, and I guess he’s not in the book?

Alright, they can’t all be winners. But what makes Many Adventures, which is the kids movie equivalent of a hangout film, work is that each of these figures is so instantly recognizable and charming. Without a plot to hang its hat (or honey pot) on, the movie rests on the audience’s desire to want to spend time with these fluff-filled companions, and gives them such easily-accessible and well-mixed personalities to where that’s a winning proposition.

Much of the desire to hang around the Hundred Acre Wood comes from the film’s distinctive art style and engaging animation. The film maintains a storybook illustration look throughout, with scraggly, visible pencil lines around each of the characters, and a sketched-in quality to the backgrounds and settings. The autumnal but still eye-catching palette gives everything the patina of worn paper, and helps set a particular jovial, child-like mood to each adventure.

The same goes for the fourth wall...er...fourth page-breaking aesthetic of the film. Some of its most enjoyable stretches come from the characters acknowledging that they’re in a children’s book. Words blow away in a gust of wind, or a flood comes to wash them away, or they even make for a makeshift landing spot and slide for a tree-stuck Tigger. A pair of bouncing enthusiasts nearly bounce their way out of the book, or a trio of wanderers trek from one page to the other. And the narrator converses with the characters, answering their questions and speaking as a voice of wisdom. All these neat little conceits add to the ever-present whimsy that permeates the film.

The same goes for the pure design and movement approach to the film’s central figures. Pooh’s belly jiggles just as it should, and the bear lumbers and thumps like he’s full of fluff. Tigger, by contrast, has more of an elastic quality that helps accentuate his frenetic movements and trademark dance. And Rabbit, who’s arguably the most down-to-earth in terms of designs, still has an expressive qualities, with his heavy brows and jowled face that lay the foundation for his constant woe-is-me exasperation. Each character’s look and feel is unique, which makes them extra entertaining when mixed together.

The vignettes the movie presents find good excuses to mix and match the characters’ different energies, while finding more excuses to show off the animated style of the piece. Pooh Bear’s endless quest for more honey leads to delightful zips through the air on balloons, tumblebees from treetops, and iconic instances of getting stuck in a neighbor’s less-than-portly porthole. Our heroes are knocked around by the wind or sent rushing down the waterway in a downpour. The whole crew gets lost or stuck or just bounced around as the retiring Rabbit tries to be rid of the extraverted Tigger, only to welcome back and even take in his infectious joy when the timing is right. There’s not much to these little fables, but they’re all rich in detail and in amusing interactions and set pieces.

They’re also rife with catchy songs. From Tigger’s trademark self-description, to Pooh’s introduction, to the ballad of the “Little Black Rain Cloud”, Many Adventures doesn't sport the most intricate melodies or lyrics, but they’re each perfectly suited to the film’s rush of childhood vibe. There’s subtly clever wordplay in many of them, and most have an appropriately bouncy and memorable quality to them that will leave them tumbling around in your head for days to come.

The stories told by children rarely have the sort of narrative logic and cohesiveness that their grown-up counterparts do. It’s fitting, then, that a series of tales meant to represent the imaginary stories dreamed up by Christopher Robin don’t amount to one large narrative, but rather a series of little games and mishaps and thrilling-but-safe events. Few films capture the kid logic and friends-at-play vibe that this movie represents so well. Its childlike joys, delights, and thorough adorableness is self-justifying.

But even an ever-present cuteness has to go away sooner or later. In its closing moments, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh captures the melancholy knowledge that these games and escapades have an expiration day, that one day soon, Christopher Robin will grow up and go to school and leave his toys behind, and the Hundred Acre Wood will live on only in his memory. As it takes a final, book-bound bow, the movie recognizes the wistfulness of such inevitabilities, which only taste bitter in light of the sweetness of youth, the sort that doesn't need the strictures of regular storytelling to earn our love and affection.

A fantastic adaptation and companion to the Milne stories that whilst squarely aimed at very young children has enough warmth and humour to be enjoyed by adults too. More so than other Disney adaptations of famous children's stories, the film never lets the audience forget its literary origins. The episodic nature of the plot is actually amplified rather than hidden. Thus like many Disney films it opens with a book and is introduced by a narrator, but in some beautifully judged moments, the characters break the fourth wall and interact with both the narrator and the book itself. Themes of friendship and kindness as well as fears of loneliness and darkness are all played out over 3 stories which capture the whimsy, humour and imagination from the books. The animation has a quaint timeless quality that captures Shepard's original artwork from the books too. Given that the film essentially brings together three shorts previously made (Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too) each of the film's stories can be enjoyed separately, but the links between the episodes are cleverly done, not least with a final coda to the film that is tinged with regret and sadness not just that childhood eventually has to come to an end, but that it is so easy to forget it. Perhaps that final reminder to both adults and children that the wonder, whimsy and imagination of childhood are there to be celebrated and cherished is the best tribute to the book the film can offer.