Psycho's Movie Reviews #388: Piglet's BIG Movie (2003)
- Apr 2, 2022
- 9 min read

Piglet's Big Movie is a 2003 American animated musical comedy-drama film released by Walt Disney Pictures on March 21, 2003. The film features the characters from the Winnie-the-Pooh books written by A. A. Milne and is the third theatrically released Winnie the Pooh feature. In this film, Piglet is ashamed of being small and clumsy and wanders off into the Hundred Acre Wood, leading all of his friends to form a search party to find him. Piglet's Big Movie was produced by the Japanese office of Disneytoon Studios and the animation production was by Walt Disney Animation Japan, Inc. with additional animation provided by Gullwing Co., Ltd., additional background by Studio Fuga and digital ink and paint by T2 Studio.
Plot
Eeyore, Rabbit, Tigger and Pooh are working on a plan to get honey from a beehive. This involves getting the bees to move into a new hive by convincing them that Eeyore is a bee. Piglet comes up to them during the attempt, but is effectively told that he is too small to help. The plan goes awry when the bees do not fall for it, but Piglet manages to divert the bees into the new hive using a funnel and then seals the hive shut, trapping the bees. Unfortunately, no one has seen Piglet's heroism, having all been hiding from the bees, and they take all the credit for themselves. Piglet, feeling neglected, wanders sadly away.
After the bees break free, Pooh, Rabbit, Tigger, and Eeyore escape to Piglet's house. They eventually notice that Piglet is missing, assume that he has been scared off by, or kidnapped by the bees, and decide to try and find him. They are joined by Roo and together the five friends search for Piglet. They are aided in this search by Piglet's scrapbook, in which he has drawn pictures of the adventures that he has shared with his friends. The characters use the pictures to tell the stories depicted therein, leading to several flashbacks.
One of the stories told is when Kanga and Roo first moved to the Hundred Acre Wood. Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Rabbit are afraid of the newcomers and Rabbit concocts a plan to use Piglet as a decoy so they could ransom Roo to force Kanga to leave. To teach Rabbit a lesson, Kanga pretends to believe that Piglet is Roo and gives him a dose of fish oil and a bath. She gives him a cookie afterwards and Piglet realizes that she is actually very nice. Roo and Rabbit have become friends and everyone agrees that Kanga and Roo should stay.
Another story told is the expedition to find the North Pole, where Piglet uses a long stick to save Roo (who has fallen in the river). His heroism is overlooked when he gives the stick to Pooh and tries to catch Roo, who has been catapulted into the air during the rescue attempt. Christopher Robin arrives as Roo is caught by his mother and then credits Pooh with finding the North Pole (the stick he is holding in his paws). Back in the present, the friends regret not sharing the praise with Piglet.
A third story told is the building of the House at Pooh Corner. Here, Piglet comes up with the idea to build Eeyore a house in an area that they named Pooh Corner and he and Pooh are joined by Tigger to build it. Tigger and Pooh do most of the work, whilst Piglet struggles to keep up. After finishing the house, Tigger and Pooh go off to tell Eeyore. Unfortunately, the house is being held together by Piglet, who eventually loses his grip and the house collapses. Tigger and Pooh go to inform Eeyore of the bad news, leaving Piglet behind. Then they learn that Eeyore has already built himself a house out of sticks, though it has gone missing. Pooh and Tigger realize that they are using Eeyore’s old house to build Eeyore’s new house. As they struggle to explain, Piglet arrives and leads them back to Eeyore’s newly completed house. Once again, Piglet’s contributions are overlooked as the wind gets the credit for moving Eeyore’s house, but the location remains as Pooh Corner, since Pooh "would call it Pooh and Piglet Corner, if Pooh Corner didn't sound better, which it does, being smaller and more like a Corner".
Back in the present, an argument between Rabbit and Tigger ends with the scrapbook falling into a river. Without their guide, the friends return to Piglet's house and, after a time, start to draw pictures of Piglet and his adventures, some of which are new (which includes Piglet saving his friends from a swarm of bees, rescuing Roo from a sea monster, and confronting a living snowman). Then, the friends again resolve to find Piglet and go back out to find him. They come across several pages from the scrapbook, which have floated downstream, and then find the book's bindings, suspended on a broken hollow old log, overhanging a raging waterfall. Pooh goes to retrieve it, but falls into a hole in the log. The others try to reach him, but the rescue attempt is just too short. Just as they ask who can help, Piglet arrives and helps haul Pooh to safety just as the log begins to break in half. Eeyore, Rabbit, Roo and Tigger manage to escape, but the top half of the log falls far into the waters below. The survivors begin to cry and are joined by sad-looking Pooh and Piglet, who had managed to escape into the bottom half of the log just before the top half fell; unfortunately, the scrapbook has been destroyed by the fall.
Despite this loss, the friends take Piglet to show him their new drawings, including a large one showing Piglet dressed as a knight in shining armour. The next day, they hold a party, but Pooh interrupts, taking Piglet to Eeyore's house, where he has changed the sign to read Pooh and Piglet Corner; the others follow shortly after. Pooh claims that "the least [they] could do for a very small Piglet, who has done such very big things." The camera pulls back to show a large shadow of Piglet cast behind them.

Production
Piglet's Big Movie was produced by Disneytoon Studios, Walt Disney Animation (Japan), Gullwing Co., Ltd, Studio Fuga, and T2 Studio.
Music
American singer-songwriter Carly Simon wrote seven new songs for the film, and performed six of them ("If I Wasn't So Small", "Mother's Intuition", "Sing Ho for the Life of a Bear", "With A Few Good Friends", "The More I Look Inside", and "Comforting to Know"), as well as recording her own version of the Sherman brothers' "Winnie the Pooh" theme song.
"The More It Snows" features Jim Cummings and John Fiedler, as Pooh and Piglet. Simon was accompanied by her children Ben Taylor and Sally Taylor on many of the songs. Renée Fleming accompanied Simon on the song "Comforting to Know". On "Sing Ho for the Life of a Bear" Simon was accompanied by the cast.
The soundtrack also features five tracks of the film's score by Carl Johnson, as well as five of Simon's original demonstration recordings.

Release/Reception/Box Office
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a "Certified Fresh" rating of 70% based on 77 reviews, and an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's critical consensus is "Wholesome and charming entertainment for young children." On Metacritic the film has a score of 62/100 based on reviews from 23 critics. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A, on a scale of A+ to F.
Film critic Stephen Holden of New York Times called the film an "oasis of gentleness and wit." Nancy Churnin of The Dallas Morning News stated that Piglet's Big Movie was "one of the nifty pleasures in the process", despite her belief that "Disney may be milking its classics."
Piglet's Big Movie was number seven on the box-office charts on its opening weekend, earning $6 million. The film domestically grossed $23 million, half the amount of what The Tigger Movie earned, and it grossed nearly $63 million worldwide.
Budget $46 million
Box office $62.9 million

My Review
Piglet's Big Movie is the second animated Winnie The Pooh spin-off feature film where the movie focuses on Piglet
The story is about Piglet who seems to feel too small to help his friends. It begins with Pooh trying to harvest honey but ends up going completely wrong while Piglet saves them. Pooh and his friends however didn't appreciate Piglet's work much as he wonders off in the Hundred Acre Woods feeling too small to do big things. Later on the bees chase Pooh and the gang to Piglet's house where they find his book of memories. They then realize Piglet is absent with the group and start to search for him by using the book to determine what locations he's remarkably been in. Throughout the adventure we see flashbacks of Piglet actually being a big help regardless of his small size. Eventually after looking back for so long it gets dark and a thunderstorm starts coming in to the woods and everyone gets urgent to find him. Tigger and Rabbit fight over the book and lose it down the river stream. Everyone goes back to Piglet's house and starts drawing new memories for Piglet to keep them confident. Soon Roo tells everyone it's time to go find Piglet and they continue off and end up finding the old pages, they end up in peril by a deep waterfall until Piglet shows up to save everyone. It ends up going intense until Pooh and Piglet make it out. Everyone goes back to celebrate his return with Pooh renaming the sign to "Pooh and Piglet Corner".
This movie honestly took me a double watch to appreciate this story since it does have some flaws. Two of the main flaws being the continuity error of Tigger appearing in the flashback with Kanga and Roo moving in since he wasn't introduced until way later after (as seen from The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh). And the other flaw being that the writing does feel a little a bit childish than even The Tigger Movie. I originally reviews the story as too childish and strict and kinda lazy but it really isn't if you just have the huge heart to understand as much as I do. Winnie The Pooh has had some stories that aren't like many other movies, especially ones that go to theaters. The original was literally 3 stories in one production combined and this movie relates in a way. It doesn't exactly focus on the present time where Pooh and the gang are searching for Piglet, it focuses on side plots from the past when Piglet was actually very helpful to his friends. And once again it somehow works. I don't know how honestly but it just does to me. Mainly because the writers remember Winnie The Pooh pretty well when Disney was the best. This story has a lot of charm executing the couple flaws as well that actually feels good for any audiences (if again you understand this movie like I do). It does a good job focusing on Piglet in both time periods I mean he does wonder off and we don't get anymore screen time of him until near the end since yeah, this movie also went to theaters so it's gonna have a bigger impact and suspense than the direct-to-video movies. And I'm honestly glad it does this because it doesn't even hint the audience where Piglet actually is in the meantime and we focus on finding out where he actually went a while ago.

The animation is great, not the best I mean The Tigger Movie did seem to capture the animation style a little better in relation to A. A Milne's illustrations so it does look cleaner here, but I enjoy the fact that it's still very smooth and the colours stay proper to every character drawn and the backgrounds also have a nice touch like they should. However it gets even better when we see the scrapbook animation style where Pooh's drawings come to life. They capture this style really well and it's still fascinating to me. However my biggest compliment of the animation is they don't recycle animation from older Winnie The Pooh media, I mean it did go to theaters so I wouldn't think of that anyway. But home movies like "A Very Merry Pooh Year" use an entire chunk of the running time with recycled Pooh animations featuring the old footage itself. But when they show the memories here they actually go out of there way and make them new with new and theatrical animation.
The voice acting is on point. However there is no narrator in this movie, nor was there an interactive book. I was actually surprised by this. But anyway, Jim Cummings nails Pooh and Tigger very well. And of course John Fielder does a magnificent job as Piglet's voice after being the longest OG voice actor in the franchise. Peter Cullen voices Eeyore, Ken Sansom voices Rabbit, Nikita Hopkins voices Roo, Kath Soucie voices Kanga, Andre Stojka voices Owl however Andre Stojka didn't have a lot of lines in this film. I noticed that Owl didn't appear much here and I'm guessing it's because of his age interfering with his voice. And Tom Wheatley voices Christopher Robin with a nice British accent. The voice of the bees however was uncredited so I have no clue who did the bees. But I'm very happy to see 95% of the voices reprise their roles as they normally do and they have wonderful voice performances.
The songs in this movie are surprisingly good as well. It's not the Sherman brothers but Carly Simon does have a really nice touch to the soundtrack. She even sings the original Winnie The Pooh theme in the very beginning. But songs like "Mother's Intuition" and "Sing Ho for the Life of a Bear" are just sung so well and have really nice instrumental. We even see her appear at the very end of the movie for the reprise of "With a Few Good Friends" when rolling the first credits. The rest of the orchestral scores aren't top notch but they're fine. Carly Simon does really well surprisingly though.
Piglet's Big Movie takes a lot of heart to appreciate especially if you're not really a fan of Winnie The Pooh. And if you are you still have to go deeper in your heart than you would normally do. This movie is really good, not the best, but definitely a recommendation, especially if you love Piglet. 8.7/10
{Where this movie truly shines is through Carly Simon's soundtrack; it's AMAZING. Here's my Top 3}
{3- Mother's Intuition}
{2- Sing Ho For The Life Of A Bear}
{1- With A Few Good Friends}
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