Winnie the Pooh (Disney film)



The 51st Film in the Disney Animated Canon. Winnie the Pooh is a direct sequel to the 1977 film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. It is based on three previously unadapted Pooh stories ("In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh Finds One" and a fusion of "In Which Rabbit Has a Busy Day and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings" and "In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump").


 * Pooh runs out of honey and has to find some.
 * Eeyore's tail is gone and everyone tries to find the perfect replacement.
 * Christopher Robin goes away for a while and leaves a note saying he'll be "back soon", but his friends assume that he was captured by a monster call the Backson, and go on a hunt for it!

The film is notable for being the second traditionally animated theatrical Disney film post-Home on the Range, as well as Disney's third sequel that's part of the Animated Canon.

The film opened in mid-July 2011, and is already receiving excellent reviews -- Rotten Tomatoes in particular has given the film an impressive 91% "Certified Fresh" rating -- a sharp contrast from their recent critical thrashing of Pixar's Cars 2. Unfortunately, the film did so-so at the box office, having just barely made up its budget (although Disney claims that it is living up to expectations), undoubtedly due to it being released the same day as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II.

This movie also opened with the theatrical short cartoon The Ballad of Nessie.

""Oh, stuff and fluff!""
 * An Aesop: Put your friends first.
 * Arc Words: "A very important thing to do."
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Inverted --
 * Art Shift: The Backson Song is done in the form of animated chalk drawings.
 * Body Horror: A Played for Laughs example is done In this teaser clip -- when Pooh tries to reach for a pot of honey, his belly bursts open -- to reveal a bunch of white stuffing inside. It also serves as a Call Back to Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, where the same thing happens during Pooh's morning exercises.


 * Book Ends: The live-action shots of Christopher Robin's room.
 * Butt Monkey
 * Eeyore, in this case, one-half literally.
 * Piglet
 * Rabbit, sometimes.
 * Catch Phrase: Oh bother.
 * Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Gopher does not appear nor is he mentioned. This is probably to emphasize the producers' intent to return to the original stories, where he didn't appear either, after so many movies and specials that have had him.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Everyone to some degree, but especially Piglet.
 * Companion Cube: Christopher Robin's balloon, nicknamed "B'loon," is a completely normal (if unrealistically indestructible) balloon, but is treated by all the characters as if it was a living, sentient character.
 * Conspicuous CG: The hunny pots at a few points along with some bushes.
 * Creative Closing Credits: The credits start with the stuffed animals posed in various scenes from the film as Christopher Robin would do with them in his room, and then their animated versions interact with the rolling credits.
 * Dark Reprise: "A Very Important Thing to Do"
 * Denser and Wackier: Than even the original 3 featurettes! Given the writing and the animation, this was wholly intentional by the directors!
 * Disney Acid Sequence: The Backson Song and "Everything is Honey".
 * In a less funny way, when Pooh and friends begin to line up items to the Backson Trap, Owl uses a rope to lower himself down to the bridge where Pooh and friends play Pooh sticks. To place items, of course.
 * Easter Egg: Look at the poster on this page and tell me what the trees look like.
 * The Eeyore: Eeyore. Not that anybody cares.
 * Five-Man Band: The group can be seen as this.
 * The Hero: Winnie the Pooh
 * The Lancer: Tigger
 * The Smart Guy: Rabbit
 * The Big Guy: Eeyore
 * The Chick: Piglet
 * The Mentor: Owl
 * Team Mom: Kanga
 * Tagalong Kid: Roo
 * The Man Behind the Man: Christopher Robin
 * Funny Background Event: In the Backson song, the characters all complain about holes in their socks - Except Pooh, who has holes in his shirt and a solid sock.
 * Honey-O-Vision: After spending almost the entire day without honey, Pooh does this. It gets so bad that dialogue is replaced with the characters just saying "honey" and the book's words all replaced with "honey" as well. Also falls under Madness Mantra, arguably.
 * The Millennium Age of Animation
 * Never Say "Die": Averted..
 * Never Trust a Trailer: The first trailer was surprisingly sad, seemingly going with the audience's nostalgia for the original shorts and implying that Christopher Robin is giving up his toys. The movie itself on the other hand, was Denser and Wackier(though still having its moments), and adapted three A.A. Milne stories previously unadapted. Not that hurt the movie in any way, but its still an example.
 * No Animals Were Harmed: The end credits include a statement proclaiming that "No stuffed animals were harmed".
 * No Fourth Wall: Like the featurettes, the Narrator frequently interacts and gives advice with the characters, who can also walk on, touch, and knock down letters from the pages of the book they are in. This even serves as a plot point.
 * Noodle Incident: Owl to Pooh -- "...And let me tell you, that was the last time I'll ever put MY beak in a keyhole!"
 * The Other Darrin: Jim Cummings and others were Other Darrins to the original voices way before 2011, but this film brings in Craig Ferguson as Owl, Tom Kenny as Rabbit, and Bud Luckey as Eeyore.
 * Plot Induced Stupidity: Of course, it's a Pooh film, so a certain amount of charming stupidity on the characters' part is pretty much a given. Possibly the most comic moment in the film, however, involves several of the characters, including Owl, becoming trapped in a hole. Piglet is the only member of the group not in the hole and is eventually sent to Christopher Robin's to get a jump rope, but is afraid to travel through the scary forest. Owl then flies out of the hole in order to give Piglet a pep talk. He then sends him on his way, and flies back into the hole. Everyone looks at Owl, stunned... only to then congratulate him on giving such a rousing speech.
 * Poke the Poodle: The Backson's "evil deeds" seem to be this.
 * Pop Star Composer: Zooey Deschanel performed the film's songs (written by the co-writers of Avenue Q).
 * Random Events Plot: This film manages to take three chapters from the books and mix them all into one competently structured story, albeit with several scenes that do nothing to push the plot forward. Given how its established that this is completely in the imagination of a child, it's all in good fun. It's also a nice nod to the source material, which was more concerned with humor and charm than narrative, and also to the 1960's Disney films directed by Woolie Reitherman, which were all pretty episodic.
 * Retraux: The film makes more of an effort to follow the style of the original shorts more closely than the previous Disney Toon Pooh films, right down to details like xerox lines and the backgrounds.
 * Running Gag: Several.
 * Eeyore loses his tail, and throughout the movie characters keep attaching different objects to the nail on his buttocks.
 * Pooh's strangely-human tummy rumbling sounds.
 * Everyone singing the Congratulations song every time someone finds a tail for Eeyore. Including a gloomy, solo version sung by Eeyore himself when he walks onto the scene with his new found tail
 * Scenery Porn: The watercolor backgrounds are very nice to look at.
 * Separated by a Common Language: There was a minor kerfluffle among British viewers about Rabbit referring to a "jump rope" rather than a "skipping rope". The same character at one point also imagines getting a lot of money, which has dollar signs on it.
 * Shout-Out
 * A shot of Piglet replacing a pine cone on a tree stump with a teapot is a homage to the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
 * "Aw shucks, I'm speechless."
 * The Stinger:
 * A shot of Piglet replacing a pine cone on a tree stump with a teapot is a homage to the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
 * "Aw shucks, I'm speechless."
 * The Stinger:

"Owl: Its toes are black Its fur is blue I swear that all I tell you is NOT MADE UP!"
 * Storybook Opening: 'Natch.
 * Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Shows up a lot in The Backson Song.


 * Take That: These two trailer spots, which poke fun at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, which was released on the same day as this film.
 * Trailer Spoof: The movie came out the same weekend as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and thus some Pooh ads started out with lighting text on a cloudy sky (like the Harry Potter movies) with taglines such as "Get ready for the final battle" and "How do you spell adventure?" ...with cuts to Pooh running from bees and inverting a set of blocks from "POTR" to "POOH".
 * "The Villain Sucks" Song: The Backson Song.
 * Who's on First?: The "knot, not, naught" conversation.
 * X-Ray Sparks: Parodied in the movie in a Freeze-Frame Bonus, during a montage of Eeyore trying out replacements for his tail (he uses a weather vane at one point and gets struck by lightning).