The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a 1977 American animated musical anthology film produced by Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. It is the 22nd Disney animated feature film and was first released on a double bill with The Littlest Horse Thieves on March 11, 1977.
Its characters have spawned a franchise of various sequels and television programs, clothing, books, toys, and an attraction of the same name at Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Hong Kong Disneyland in addition to Pooh's Hunny Hunt in Tokyo Disneyland.
Plot
The film's content is derived from three previously released animated featurettes Disney produced based upon the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974). Extra material was used to link the three featurettes together to allow the stories to merge into each other.
A fourth, shorter scene was added to bring the film to a close, originally made during the production of Blustery Day (based on the presence of Jon Walmsley as Christopher Robin). The sequence was based on the final chapter of The House at Pooh Corner, where Christopher Robin must leave the Hundred Acre Wood behind as he is starting school. In it, Christopher Robin and Pooh discuss what they liked doing together and the boy asks his bear to promise to remember him and to keep some of the memories of their time together alive. Pooh agrees to do so, and the film closes with The Narrator saying that wherever Christopher Robin goes, Pooh will always be waiting for him whenever he returns.
Six years after the release of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Disney commissioned a fourth featurette based on the stories. Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore premiered in theaters on March 11, 1983, but was not originally connected to the preceding films in any manner. It has since been added to home video releases of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
Production
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was the last film in the Disney canon in which Walt Disney had personal involvement, since one of the shorts (Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree) was released during his lifetime and he was involved in the production of Blustery Day. It was always Walt Disney's intention to create a feature film, but he decided to make shorts instead — after production had begun — to familiarize U.S. audiences with the characters. All three shorts, as well as future feature films, boast classic songs by the Sherman Brothers including "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers".
The character Gopher, which does not appear in the Milne stories, was created because Disney wanted an all-American character that could appeal to the children, and also add an element of comedy.
For the character Piglet, hand gestures and other movements were used by the animators to create expressiveness, since he (and Pooh) had the appearance of dolls or stuffed animals with relatively simple button eyes. The scene where Rabbit deals with Pooh's rump being part of the "décor of his home" was not in the original book, but was reportedly contemplated by Disney when he first read the book.
Release/Reception/Box Office
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh holds a unanimous critic approval rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 17 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads "Perhaps the most faithful of Disney's literary adaptations, this cute, charming collection of episodes captures the spirit of A.A. Milne's classic stories." Film critic Leonard Maltin called the original Pooh featurettes "gems"; he also noted that the artwork resembles the book illustrations and that the particular length of these featurettes meant that the filmmakers didn't have to "compress or protract their script."
Ruth Hill Viguers, however, when writing in A Critical History of Children’s Literature during the 1960s, mentioned Disney's Winnie the Pooh along with several other Disney adaptations as having "destroyed the integrity of the original books".
My Review
Ahh Pooh Bear, The Epitome Of Innocence!
Q: In our 1940s tour, we learned that between "Bambi" and "Cinderella," Disney's animated features were nothing but shorts strung together. True or False?
A: False, actually: Disney's 1977 film "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" is three Pooh shorts in one! All connected together with storybook sequences, and lots more!!!!! I've seen this on VHS in May 2002, right at the tail end of Disney's "Golden Age." A great decision Disney made at that point; who wouldn't want to see that lovable bear who loves "HUNNY?" And a spring-loaded Tigger, too? Don't forget the boring Eeyore, and the mother and baby kangaroos, too! Hey, there's Piglet; don't forget him! And Christopher Robin; the characters just seem to pile on!!!!!
{So now you've learned that the anthology movies made a comeback in 1977 with "Winnie the Pooh!"}
Set over the course of a year, the film follows the adventures of characters in the 100 Acre Wood consisting of the friends and toys of young boy Christopher Robin (Bruce Reitherman, Jon Walmsley and Timothy Turner) including laidback and perpetually hungry Winnie the Pooh bear (Sterling Holloway), constantly nervous Piglet (John Fiedler), downbeat and unenthused Eeyore (Ralph Wright), bouncy boastful and carefree Tigger (Paul Winchell), and a host of other characters.
Released in 1977 on a double bill with Escape from the Dark (aka The Littlest Horse Thieves), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is based off the Winnie the Pooh stories and writings by A. A. Milne inspired by the childhood of his son Christopher Robin Milne. Originally the rights were obtained by Disney with the intention of making a feature length film, but Disney eventually decided to make a series of featurettes that could be attached to live action features. The shorts proved popular enough with audiences, but critical reception was more mixed, particularly in the United Kingdom where the initial attempts at replacing Piglet with Disney created Gopher were met with such vitriol that Piglet was added prominently to subsequent shorts. The three shorts that originated from Milne's writings: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974) were eventually repackaged into a feature film under the title The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and while not a seamless stitch job, it does feel like a cohesive whole.
While the plot in Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh feels episodic (as it would with three shorts linked end to end), it does at least feel like a complete film thanks to a unifying theme and characters that give the film a greater sense of "wholeness" than something like Fun & Fancy Free or Melody Time where it was more random in the assortment of collected material. With Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh it feels like we're glimpsing at roughly a year of life in the Hundred Acre Wood with Christopher Robin interacting with his toys and animals having small lowkey adventures, and while the adventures are small scale, there's a sense of time and progression with little details in the character interactions and environments showing movement. But even taking out those details, the stories resonate so well because these characters have such memorable and describable personalities and mannerisms that stick with you. Winnie the Pooh with his gentle good-natured absent mindedness is just a delight in how infectiously happy he is and although a "bear with very little brain" as the film often reiterates, there is a logic to his simple-mindedness that brings with it a level of charm such as a scene where he, Rabbit and Piglet are lost and end up at the same spot repeatedly while trying to get home so Pooh suggests if they look for the spot they keep ending up at then they'll get home instead, it's that kind of inverted thinking that just makes the character so irresistibly lovable.
The rest of the supporting characters are just as memorable as the titular bear. Piglet is panicky and nervous but also loyal and true, Rabbit is finnicky, particular, and tightly wound but also altruistic, Owl is prideful and longwinded, and Tigger is thoughtless and impulsive but also joyful and enthusiastic. All the characters are great and memorable and they play well against each other with Rabbit's interactions with Pooh and Tigger leading to humorous exchanges, Piglet and Pooh's friendship endearing, and so many other scenes and interactions that just work so well. Even the narration by Sebastian Cabot is a character often interacting and conversing with the characters in the story with some fourth wall breaks involving the book that are both humorous and clever without being overly distracting. These are best experienced first-hand, but my favourite involves Tigger stuck in a tree and how he is rescued. The film adds an additional epilogue based on the final chapter from the Milne book, The House at Pooh Corner, and it's the perfect note to go out on story wise carrying that bittersweet weight needed for finality that sticks with you and feels just right.
While The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a package film and fits well within the Company's 70s era budget conscious mindset, it's such a well made package film that if you didn't know about the original featurette formats of the stories you'd probably think it was meant to be shown this way. While the film is definitely "simple" that shouldn't be confused for "lacking", the movie makes the simplicity part of its appeal and takes these simple stories/concepts and populates them with charming and engaging characters that help make the world of the 100 Acre Wood feel alive and welcoming and a world you're sad to say a bittersweet farewell to. 8.5/10
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