Winnie-the-Pooh fan that I am, I was eager to see Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie,
in spite of the potential worry inherent in a direct-to-video release
such as this. After all, there had been other Pooh Halloween specials
that went straight to video, and those were perfectly worthwhile. Why
not this one? I loved Pooh’s Heffalump Movie
(except the title, and this one is even more cumbersome and
condescending), so I figured a new excursion with Lumpy would be
enjoyable enough. And at 66 minutes, it was about as long as the feature
film that precipitated it. Or so I thought.
I was robbed.
Let me say first off that this is not a bad movie in and of itself.
It’s perfectly in line with most of the Pooh films – and considerably
better than Piglet’s Big Movie,
to a certain extent. Roo (Nikita Hopkins) is overcome with anticipation
at the prospect of showing Lumpy (Kyle Stanger) how much fun Halloween
is, as Heffalumps do not celebrate that particular holiday. Lumpy is at
first just as excited as Roo, but his thrills fade into chills when
Tigger (Jim Cummings) regales him with a tale about the dreaded Gobloon
who lurks near the Tree of Terror. This horrific beast possesses the
power to turn those it catches into Jaggedy Lanterns, and this prospect
is enough to encourage Lumpy to spend the evening hiding under Rabbit’s
(Ken Sansom) bed.
This is an annoyance for Rabbit, who is
determined to make this the most efficient Halloween yet. In
preparation, he has gathered all the candy in the Hundred Acre Wood,
though I wonder how he managed that without anyone else knowing. At any
rate, Rabbit attempts to assuage the youngster’s fears while Roo voices
his disappointment at Lumpy’s reluctance to face the spooky holiday.
Poor Eeyore (Peter Cullen) has little to do here but proclaim his
superfluity, though he does appear in later scenes in a slightly more
useful capacity. At this point, Lumpy’s similarity to Piglet (the late
John Fielder) is noticeable but acceptable. He’s a jittery little
fellow, after all, and though it would be better to give him a more
distinguishable character trait, it’s not strange for one so young to be
frightened by spooks. An adventure element soon commences when Pooh
(Cummings) absent-mindedly consumes all the candy in the Hundred-Acre
Wood , leaving none for trick-or-treating. Roo decides it shall be up to
Lumpy and him to seek out the Gobloon before it can find them, thereby
forcing it to grant them one wish – the candy needed for Halloween to
continue. In the name of bravery and friendship, Lumpy agrees, but will
his nerves get the better of him? Or can Roo keep his spirits up with a
recitation of the time Piglet experienced similar Halloween anxieties?
Okay, this is where the special lost me. The animation’s fine, the
characterizations are fine, the music, while not particularly memorable,
is fine. What’s not fine is sticking an old Halloween special (Boo to You Too! Winnie-the-Pooh)
into the middle of the movie as a flashback and passing the thing off
as more than an hour of new material. I enjoyed that special, and as it
happens I don’t have an official video of it, so that lessened my ire
somewhat. Someone unfamiliar with the earlier special might not care.
But still. That’s just dishonest, not to mention lazy. It’s gross
manipulation, insincere marketing, and I am very disappointed in Disney.
The special involves Piglet being afraid of Halloween until
the knowledge that Pooh is in peril wakens secret stores of bravery. An
amusing sub-plot involves Gopher’s (Michael Gough) repeated attempts to
devise the perfect Halloween costume. I became a bit worried when Roo
informed Lumpy that he was going to tell him this story, but I assumed
it would be a brief nod and then we’d get on with things. Nope. We got
the whole thing. By the end of the real movie, I realized that not only
was this truly only a half-hour long special but that it was at its
heart largely a copy of that prior special. Way to make the
self-plagiarism obvious.
So yeah, I’m disappointed. I’d like
to recommend the special, as it’s sweet and just as adorable as Pooh
specials generally are, but I’m too annoyed with the unscrupulous manner
in which it was presented. If they’d just shown them as two separate
specials and advertised the DVD as a compilation, I would be much
happier. As it is, I feel I have been taken in, and for that reason, I
shall furrow my brow, wag an accusatory finger at Disney, and refuse to
endorse this release that demonstrates a startling lack of integrity.
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