Christopher Robin (2018)
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Christopher Robin Movie Review
Christopher Robin is a 2018 family comedy drama film directed by Marc Foster and starring Ewan McGregor. It’s such a good, very underrated movie.
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“Doing nothing often leads to the very best kind of something“
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So Christopher Robin is all grown up and he had become a boring man obsessed with work and neglectful of his wife and daughter. But then Winnie the Pooh arrives into the picture and changes his point of view, reminds him of the importance of childhood and fixes his relationship with his daughter. The story itself has traces of ‘Toy Story 3’ and similar ode to childhood films in it, but for the most part it’s its own thing.
I absolutely loved almost every second of it. It’s a very interesting movie in approach as the first half is exceedingly dark, gloomy and frankly even depressing. But I liked that quite a bit as it was necessary to set up the hopelessness of the situation. And then the bright, funny and sweet second half was perfect to counterbalance the previously dark film. It all worked out surprisingly well as I didn’t expect they would manage to pull it off, but they thankfully did.
That being said, that entire chase in the third act and the speeches and everything was way too contrived and familiar for me as it reminded me of all those live-action family flicks of yesteryear, particularly the nineties. I really thought that they should have added a different, more original plot point to end off the movie.
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But I loved the rest of the film so much that the third act could not derail it. And the same goes for somewhat rushed beginning and too many nods to ‘The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh’ in terms of the dialogue. Yes, the first meet-up of Pooh and Robin was great, the entire Heffalumps and Woozles part is so wonderful, the daughter meeting the animals was beautiful and of course every scene between Pooh and Christopher was beyond sad and touching.
I really liked this Robin. He’s familiarly characterized, but still an important, realistic figure. Ewan McGregor did an amazing job in the main role, he was perfectly cast and he needs to be talked about more when discussing this flick. I really liked both the daughter and the wife. The business partners though are weak, disposable and typically cartoony.
As for the animals, they surprisingly enough work. Yes, initially they seemed overly CGI and weird for me. Seeing them as real toys definitely took some time getting used to. But when I did, I ended up loving most of them. Kanga, Roo and even Owl and Rabbit are definitely underutilized, but Piglet is wonderful and faithful to the previous movies and the same goes for Eeyore who is reliably quite depressing and funny at being gloomy. Tigger is his usual very funny self and he made me chuckle more than a couple of times. As for Winnie the Pooh himself, I definitely liked him despite all odds. He’s somewhat different here, but still he manages to be both funny, sweet and even wise. Jim Cummings did a hell of a job in this role.
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Christopher Robin is mostly very well paced and also wonderfully scored. The cinematography is great and although the forest was too gloomy, it was still necessary for this type of story. The direction from Marc Foster is also pretty good and the dialogue is terrific. Coupled with its sophisticated dialogue is a strong emotional engagement which led to a highly moving film that almost made me cry.
Although definitely too typically plotted in its third act, Christopher Robin is still such a good, underrated and honestly an immensely beautiful film that almost made me cry how effectively emotional it is. The first half is gloomy and depressive and the second half is bright and sweet. All of it worked thanks to stellar, sophisticated dialogue and terrific characterization: Ewan McGregor’s Robin is a great character, Tigger is quite funny and Pooh is per usual highly endearing.
