Le avventure di Winnie the Pooh

The 22nd animated Disney classic is what I consider the epitome of innocence and childhood. This movie brings fond memories of a childhood that doesn't exist nowadays. It shows very well the beauty of life and magic of childhood, taking us to the relaxing and calm environment of the Hundred Acre Wood and back to the days when childhood was really childhood.

"The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" is simple but quite happy. It is narrated through a storybook and illustrations, which is a different way to tell a story.

This movie was made in a different way than the other Disney classics. The 3 Winnie the Pooh's shorts were put together, forming this motion picture but with the addiction of a conclusion. These 3 shorts are named "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree", "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day" and "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too!". The movie includes 2 live-action segments (a small one at the beginning and a minor one at the end).

Following old Disney's tradition, it has great artwork, lovable characters, charming songs, classic humor and nice animation.

There are no villains (something rare on Disney classics) and the characters are all friends. They all have different personalities, but they're all cool.

Winnie the Pooh is a bear with little brain but he's funny, cute and adorable. He looks more like a doll. You know, like one of those Teddy Bears most children have or had once.

Eeyore is a sad, depressed and pessimist donkey. Rabbit is authoritarian, tense and sometimes unfair, but cool. Piglet is tiny, cute, shy and nervous. Tigger is carefree, wild, humorous, hilarious, amusing, very lively and loves to bounce on his friends. He bounces on Pooh, Piglet and Rabbit, but never on Cristopher Robin, Kanga, Roo, Eeyore, Gopher and Owl. It's good to have a character like Tigger to cheer us up.

Kanga is nice and her son Roo is cool, innocent and enthusiastic. The Owl is very talkative and wise. Cristopher Robin is a caring, sweet and friendly little boy - and he's always available for his friends and helps them whenever they need.

Gopher is hilarious - «he's not in the book» and it's simply awesome whenever he falls into his hole. He is inspired on the Beaver from "Lady and the Tramp". They both can talk and whistle at the same time.

As for the songs, they are simple but charming and childish in a good way. I like all these songs, it's hard to pick a favorite: "Winnie the Pooh", "Up, down and touch the ground", "Rumbly in my tumbly", "Little Black Rain Cloud", "Mind Over Matter", "A Rather Blustery Day", "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers", "Heffalumps and Woozles", "The Rain Rain Rain Came Down Down Down" and "Hip Hip Pooh-Ray!".

As usual, great voice talents from the past shine here too. The great Sterling Holloway provides the voice for Winnie the Pooh. Ralph Wright was a great Eeyore - that gloomy and deep voice is perfect for him. Rabbit was never the same again without Junius Matthews. Sebastian Cabot was a good narrator. John Fiedler is wonderful as Piglet's voice. Barbara Luddy made a good Kanga. Paul Winchell... what a genius! He was a perfect Tigger! Seriously, no one can replace him and Tigger just isn't the same without him.

Yes, I know that this feature is made of 3 previously made shorts, or a package feature as Walt Disney would call it, but it's still wonderful in every way.

Walt Disney chose the perfect cast for the films. Sterling Holloway was the perfect voice for Pooh. Paul Winchell was the Best Tigger ever! John Fiedler voiced his heart out on Piglet. And the others? I'll say that they're wonderful.

The music score is truly one of the greatest musical scores ever. I mean I could just hum it to myself over and over and over again.

And the songs are really catchy, too. Like the theme song, and The Wonderful Thing about Tiggers, and the others, I like them, too.

The ending created just for this movie, is truly one of the most heart-touching endings ever. It really shows that boys and girls, like Christopher Robin, have to say good-bye to their childhood friends. But if I were you, I say to keep them in your memories as your fondest.

So there you have it. A great review for an even greater movie. What more could you ask for?

This film is actually comprised of three earlier featurettes ("Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree", "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day", "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Too"), the first three of the four Disney efforts at filming the world of Winnie The Pooh which (the fourth was "A Day for Eyeore") that were closely based on specific A.A. Milne stories, and were excellently done. Despite not being drawn the way E. H. Sheppard originally illustrated them (which is, perhaps a loss), the characters are played with great respect for the way they were written. They have been Americanized in their speech, and they don't rely so much on the British comedy of manners that Milne mined so successfully, but they are quite solidly the same "people" they were in the books. Sterling Holloway is a marvelous Pooh whose his furry voice seems to convey both his outer softness and his mental fuzziness. Paul Winchell's Tigger is probably an improvement of the original, simply because words alone could never really convey Tigger's manic exuberance the way Winchell's performance does. Ralph Wright's Eyeore is a delight, and the other characters hold their own and uphold their tradition completely.

The one completely un-Milne touch that has been added seems to me entirely acceptable, too. This is the occasional presence, in the story, of the Narrator, whose intervention helps move the characters through some of the more difficult moments. It is a touch of gentleness that is not cloying at all, and is occasionally rather witty.

These stories are genuinely wholesome without being sticky. If you want to feed your kids entertainment that's truly funny, has decent human values, is completely free of potty jokes, and will stand up for 6-year-olds yet won't scare three-year-olds, it doesn't get much better than this.

I always loved Winnie the Pooh. This is my favorite of all the Pooh movies. My favorite story is the first one, Winnie The Pooh and the Honey Tree, where Pooh eats too much honey and gets stuck in Rabbit's hole. It is such a heartwarming movie. I love most of the Disney movies that I saw, but this has to be one of my all time faves. My son, who is now 14 months old, is an absolute Winnie the Pooh nut. He goes nuts when the opening comes on (even though only Pooh's right arm and leg are seen). His favorite is also The Honey Tree story. Unfortunately, I dread the very last story, because he cries because the movie is over, and that means the end of the movie. He watches it so much, I have to have a second copy! If you have children, or even if you don't and you just plain love Disney (like me and my son), I highly recommend Pooh. It will really cheer you up when you are feeling bad, so I really recommend this movie (you won't be sorry you bought it!).

"The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" combines the three original featurettes based on A.A. Milne's original Pooh stories (the first two of which were produced under Walt Disney's guidance) with some new brief linking segments and a new, touching epilogue. Although ultimately Americanised, the original wit and tone of A.A. Milne is captured well, something that a lot of subsequent Disney Pooh product can't claim. Adapting E.H. Shepard's lovely illustrations with a touch of the Disney style, it contains so many wonderful, whimsical moments - Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit's front door, Piglet being blown away by the wind, Tigger shocking Pooh with tales of hefalumps and woozles - plus a wonderful array of tunes from the Sherman Brothers songbook.

The supposed original intention with the Pooh property was to produce a feature, but was eventually reconfigured as a running series of featurettes with the option of compiling them to create a feature-length release. Re-combining the shorts into a feature was seen as a sort of tribute to Walt Disney's original intention, but it does ultimately seem a bit disconnecting. In particular, the style and quality of the later "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too" segment doesn't quite match that of the two preceding chapters. As a result, I do think the three segments perhaps work a bit better as shorts of their own, but nonetheless, the material is utterly charming and still works reasonably well in a feature compilation format. Worth a look.