Sweeter Than "Hunny": Winnie the Pooh (2011)

Harry Potter 7.2 might have been the biggest movie to hit theaters last Friday, but Winnie the Pooh was the one I was most excited for. I like Harry and I have fond memories of seeing the Harry Potter movies in theaters, but it's a big epic summer movie. I like big epic summer movies, but I've already seen a handful this summer and one can only consume epic in small doses lest it loses its epic quality. On the other hand, the Winnie the Pooh trailer promised the antithesis of the big epic summer movie. The music was soft, the conflicts were simple, and the humor was gentle. The trailer and marketing of Pooh also played heavily off of the presumed nostalgia that many adults have for Pooh and pals. Being that I spent a significant amount of time in my youth watching Winnie the Pooh VHS tapes, I totally fell for the nostalgia angle and skipped out on Potter to see Pooh on opening weekend.

My expectations for Pooh were set at a minimum. I wanted to be reunited with characters from my younger days and to hang out in the Hundred Acre Wood one more time. That was pretty much it. Going into Winnie the Pooh I was fully ready to slog through a mediocre story if it meant that I could spend an hour or so basking in the golden glow of nostalgia and cuteness that the franchise represents to me.

So needless to say I was extremely pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing out loud throughout the majority of the film. Yeah, Pooh Bear is adorable as expected, but what shocked me about the movie was how funny it managed to be. The story works to create situations where the characters' personalities are allowed to play against each other to hilarious effect. The characters' facial expressions are expertly animated, which significantly adds to the humor of the different situations. I don't want to give anything away or spoil any of the jokes for you, but I will say that Rabbit's thinly veiled frustration (as perfectly illustrated on his face) acted as an awesome laugh-out-loud punchline to one of the best jokes in the movie.

Of course, one of the reasons the humor is so potent is that the characters are so well-developed. Obviously I can't credit this 2011 Winnie the Pooh with creating these characters, as the audience's familiarity with the population of the Hundred Acre Wood has had decades to strengthen and develop. Still, kudos to Disney for both sticking true to these classic characters and for allowing them to freely interact with one another in this new Pooh outing. I especially appreciated the bigger part that Christopher Robin and Owl played in this installment in the series. These were two characters that, as a kid, I often felt were a bit underdeveloped. In this new movie though, these two really get a chance to shine.

The only thing that keeps me from telling every soul I come across to run and see Pooh is its slim run time. Sadly, Pooh is just barely an hour long. While it's a pretty rock solid hour of entertainment, it's still asking the general populace a lot to plop down ten dollars to see such a short feature. For those who can afford it, however, 2011's Winnie the Pooh is a sweet, nostalgic, and shockingly funny romp through the beloved Hundred Acre Wood.