{"id":527,"date":"2018-08-29T14:59:50","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T21:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/?p=527"},"modified":"2018-10-04T20:27:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T03:27:21","slug":"christopher-robin-sadly-falls-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/2018\/08\/29\/christopher-robin-sadly-falls-short\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Robin<\/em> Sadly Falls Short"},"content":{"rendered":"

I walked into the theater expecting and wanting to like Christopher Robin<\/em>. Perhaps that was the problem. Maybe I expected too much. It turned out to be something of a disappointment.<\/p>\n

The story took far too long to get going, and there was no excuse for that because there wasn\u2019t all that much story to begin with. It boiled down to a retread of the valuable but cliched life lesson about spending less time at work and more time with your family. The first act was dull, and nothing really got interesting until the last 20 minutes or so.<\/p>\n

Ewan McGregor didn\u2019t help matters with his wooden portrayal of an adult Christopher Robin. Christopher was boring at work, boring with his family, and stayed boring even after meeting Pooh and company. Things didn\u2019t get interesting until Christopher\u2019s daughter Madeline (Bronte Carmichael) met the animals and set off on an adventure of her own.<\/p>\n

\"Jim

Jim Cummings, Nick Mohammed, and Bronte Carmichael in Christopher Robin. IMDb.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

Pooh and the other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood were somewhat of a bright spot. The CGI was beautifully done. Rather than slick, Pooh and his friends looked like worn, well-loved stuffed animals.<\/p>\n

\"Jim

Jim Cummings in Christopher Robin. IMDb.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

The voice acting – Jim Cummings (Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger), Brad Garrett (Eeyore), Nick Mohammed (Piglet), Peter Capaldi (Rabbit), Sophie Okonedo (Kanga), Sara Sheen (Roo), and Toby Jones (Owl) \u2013 was spot on. The voices and mannerisms sounded just like the recordings I remember from when I was a kid. Unfortunately, they were poorly served by the script. The screenwriters (Alex Ross Perry, Tom McCarthy, and Allison Schroeder) seemed determined to cram every Poohism ever uttered into one 104-minute movie, some of them more than once. At times, the loveable bear became downright annoying, and I don\u2019t want to be annoyed with Pooh. Tigger essentially repeated his greatest hits, and Piglet\u2019s character was pruned to the point that timidity became his single, defining trait. Eeyore was a happy exception. While most of the characters were chained to dialogue lifted from the source material, he was allowed to improvise while maintaining his general gloominess, and he had some of the best lines in the film.<\/p>\n

\"Brad

Brad Garrett and Nick Mohammed in Christopher Robin. IMDb.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Christopher Robin<\/em> could have been so much more. The writers could have played with the idea that Pooh and company were manifestations of Christopher\u2019s stress and conflicting responsibilities and were all in his head. This was even set up when Christopher\u2019s wife Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) warned him that he was going to crack if he kept working so hard. It\u2019s quickly established, though, that the stuffed animals are real, and that everyone can see and hear them. This has some very disturbing implications. First, the Hundred Acre Wood is not a childhood fantasy. It\u2019s a parallel or pocket dimension. Second, Pooh and his friends are living, sentient beings whom Christopher abandoned. It\u2019s shown in the film that the tree that serves as interdimensional portal sits on property that Christopher still owns. Would it have been so hard to drop in on his old friends once in a while? They clearly missed him terribly. It\u2019s actually quite sad, if you think about it.<\/p>\n

\"Brad

Brad Garrett, Peter Capaldi, Jim Cummings, Sophie Okonedo, Nick Mohammed, and Sara Sheen in Christopher Robin. IMDb.com<\/p><\/div>\n

I suppose I was hoping for a film that would be both entertaining and get me \u201cright in the feels\u201d like Paddington 2<\/em><\/a> earlier this year. In the end, Christopher Robin<\/em> was a good concept with a lackluster execution.<\/p>\n

Overall rating: 5\/10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I walked into the theater expecting and wanting to like Christopher Robin. Perhaps that was the problem. Maybe I expected too much. It turned out to be something of a disappointment. The story took far too long to get going, and there was no excuse for that because there wasn\u2019t all that much story to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[251,253,245,243,240,242,241,244,246,247,249,248,250,252],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-alex-ross-perry","tag-allison-schroeder","tag-brad-garrett","tag-bronte-carmichael","tag-christopher-robin","tag-ewan-mcgregor","tag-hayley-atwell","tag-jim-cummings","tag-nick-mohammed","tag-peter-capaldi","tag-sara-sheen","tag-sophie-okonedo","tag-toby-jones","tag-tom-mccarthy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}