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Piglet's Big Movie
review by
Dan Lybarger, 21 March 2003
There's an innate charm to the
residents of A. A. Milne's Hundred Acre Wood that makes even the
most uninspired adaptations of his work tolerable. Winnie the Pooh
and his cohorts are still cute and loveable, but the movies have a
mere fraction of the appeal that runs through Milne's original
stories. Piglet's Big Movie, which focuses on Pooh's
diminutive porcine pal, even repeats some of Milne's original tales
plot point-for-plot point. If only the movie could also emulate the
wit and affection in the books. In Milne's hands, the pessimistic
donkey Eeyore ("Good morning, if it is a good morning, which I
doubt."), the self-important Owl and the maternal Kanga became both
endearing and often riotously funny.
The quips and presentation in
Piglet's Big Movie thankfully have the warmth but not much of
the humor in the books. As a kid, I was drawn to Milne's world not
because it was age-appropriate but because it was hilarious.
Eeyore's dour outlook and Pooh's spectacular appetite and
misjudgments (he knocks at the door of his own house waiting for the
owner to answer it) left me in stitches. Seeing the new film is like
listening to a teacher reciting Shakespeare's Richard III
after you've seen Ian McKellen take on the role. The beauty of the
language is there, but the soul and the magic are gone.
Most of Piglet's Big Movie
is devoted to a honey heist that goes bad. Pooh, Tigger (both voiced
by Jim Cummings), Eeyore (Peter Cullen) and Rabbit (Ken Sansom)
reduce Piglet (John Fielder) to a mere observer because he is too
small. The fact that Piglet is smarter than the rest of the bunch
combined isn't entered into the equation.
When the bees get upset about
losing their handiwork to the thieves, the rest of the crew gets
separated from Piglet. Fearing the worst, they try to track down
their buddy by following clues that he's left in his scrapbook. The
document recalls their adventure -- like the quest for the North
Pole and the discovery that Kanga and Roo weren't hostile --from
Piglet's point of view. Pooh and the rest soon realize that Piglet
has played a much more important role in their lives than they
imagined.
Milne is thankfully credited for
some of the direct copying (the North Pole campaign and some other
incidents are from his stories), and the animation -- which Disney
outsourced to a Japanese studio -- is far better than the TV
episodes. Nonetheless, there is still a sense of indifference that
Pooh and his friends simply don't deserve. The message that physical
size has nothing to do with an individual's worth is certainly one
that children should hear, but it would have seemed less fulsome if
the story had been a little more fun.
Carly Simon's tunes aren't vintage
offerings, but her enthusiasm for the enterprise is obvious and
welcome. She even shows up in person at the end to serenade the
audience. If the rest of the film had her devotion, its flaws could
easily be overlooked.
After the movie finished, I
overheard a mother tell her kids that the movie has been taken from
books by a man named A.A. Milne and that Christopher Robin was his
little boy. I quickly got the sense that she was shortly going to
read the children the stories. Piglet's Big Movie is an
agreeable, if fitfully entertaining, introduction to Milne's
characters. But it's no substitute for going by the book. |
