Christopher Robin is a thoroughly fun, funny, and joyous ride with some of our favourite characters from our childhood.
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In Christopher Robin, which is directed by Marc Forster (Stranger than Fiction; The Kite Runner), our eponymous hero, played by Ewan McGregor, has grown up. He’s become a corporate man, working at a multinational luggage company as an efficiency consultant. He’s also a family man, with a wife, Evelyn (Hayley Atwell), and young daughter, Madeline. But due to work, he’s been spending less time with his family. A planned trip to the Sussex countryside where Christopher Robin had spent his childhood is cancelled when Robin receives an urgent, almost impossible, assignment to cut costs by 20%. Starting the film with a prologue of young Christopher Robin playing with Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends, the film makes it clear that grown-up Christopher Robin is no longer the same boy that played imaginary games with his friends at the Hundred Acre Wood.
Whilst Christopher Robin is struggling with work, at the Hundred Acre Wood, Winnie-the-Pooh has lost his friends. Believing that Christopher Robin can help him find his friends, Pooh stumbles upon a magical door that leads him straight to a park in London. Not so coincidentally, the park is located beside Robin’s residence. Evading an annoyingly persistent neighbour, Robin ducks into the park, where, to his shock, he meets his old friend Pooh. Despite his impending work deadline, Robin decides, very reluctantly, to bring Pooh back to the Hundred Acre Wood and to help him find his friends, which they eventually do.
This is about midway through the film, and if it doesn’t thus far feel like an adventure, it’s because we haven’t arrived at the main crux of the movie, which only begins after Christopher Robin has rushed back to London to meet his deadline, but left important work documents behind. In a reversal of roles, now Pooh and his friends have to save Christopher Robin. They have to rush to London to pass Christopher Robin the documents or else they believe that he will be eaten by the monster “Woozle”, which is actually just Robin’s boss, Winslow (Mark Gatiss).
On the way, they meet Madeline, who recognises Pooh and his friends as characters from her father’s drawings, and together, they go on the kind of adventure that they used to embark on with young Christopher Robin. And of course, what Pooh and friends are saving Christopher Robin from is not being fired by Winslow. They are saving him from himself, saving the boy inside.
Admittedly, the plot is predictable and the movie’s moral of the story is trite. But sometimes, one must be reminded of the simple truths of life. And Christopher Robin does that amply whilst giving us a thoroughly fun, funny, and joyous ride with some of our favourite characters from our childhood.
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