Pooh’s Grand Adventure – The Search For Christopher Robin
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Feature: C+
I always liked Winnie The Pooh and the characters, books
and animated cartoons, but Pooh’s Grand Adventure – The Search For
Christopher Robin (1997) marks the beginning of a sort of decline for the
character in animation. Many of the
voices that made the animated classics so great were gone, except for Paul
Winchell and John Fiedler. The heirs
who owned the character (amid much controversy) eventually sold their share of
Pooh to Disney and it has just not been the same since.
In this story, Christopher has to go to school, which
means he will not be able to spend the time he used to with Pooh and the
gang. That leaves Pooh a lost and wondering
soul for much of the story and we do not see the whole gang as much as we could
or should, rendering this a very flat, dull outing. This is for young children, but maybe Christopher Robin saw the
writing on the wall and decided to duck out of this one. It is passable at best, but this will only
have so much rewatchability. Good thing
the supplements help this disc out.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is clean,
semi-colorful and offers some depth, but oddly, the 1.33 X 1 on the nearly half-hour
Winnie The Pooh & The Blustery Day from 1968 has better color and
some detail missing from the new production.
The new feature is obviously rendered with less detail and even a more
simplified approach, while the older 1950s piece (originally in three-strip
dye-transfer Technicolor, showing us how good that must have looked in 35mm at
points) is just more colorful overall and the hand-drawn animation is still
superior. The new film is in Dolby
Digital 5.1 with good surrounds, but is not going to be bombastic considering
this is for young children. The short
is in Dolby 2.0 Mono and the rest is in 2.0 Stereo with some surround
information here and there. Besides the
short, a game, previews for other Disney DVDs and a piece about orchestral
music for the film is included.
- Nicholas Sheffo
