I recently reinstated my Netflix account, taking it off hold in
anticipation of renting a plethora of Christmas movies to help get me in
the holiday spirit. But I haven’t gotten around to updating my queue,
so the first few movies have been surprises to me. I had to laugh at the
seasonally inappropriate nature of my latest selection when I spotted
the title Springtime With Roo. However, while the movie, with its
array of Technicolor flowers and its emphasis on Easter, is thoroughly
rooted in spring, except for the puzzling appearance of a wheelbarrow
full of pumpkins, I discovered that it wasn’t such an oddball choice for
the Christmas season after all.
Springtime With Roo,
like most Winnie-the-Pooh movies, is on the short side. Clocking in at
just about an hour, this direct-to-video release begins with a hyper Roo
(Jimmy Bennett) disturbing the tranquil opening narration of David
Ogden Stiers, who explains that the young joey will be the subject of
this particular tale. To some extent that’s true, though the movie is
just as much about Rabbit (Ken Sansom), who sets the main conflict in
motion when he shatters his friends’ anticipation over the annual Easter
egg hunt by declaring it Spring Cleaning Day instead. It soon becomes
clear that Rabbit no longer considers Easter an acceptable holiday, and
while Roo is disappointed to be missing out on so much fun, his biggest
concern is his friend’s unhappiness.
It took me a while to cotton on to this, but Springtime With Roo, much like Veggie Tales’ An Easter Carol, is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Persnickety Rabbit is an ideal choice to play the role of curmudgeonly
old codger; he’s as much a neat freak as Scrooge is a miser, and at his
worst, he can be quite the misanthrope. Owl might have been a good
choice too, but he doesn’t make an appearance in this video, nor does
Christopher Robin. Gopher isn’t in the main feature but does turn up, in
typical pyro mode, in the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episode Trap as Trap Can, which follows Hunny for a Bunny in the Special Features.
Though the nods to the original story are not as plenteous as they
could be, Roo is an excellent stand-in for Tiny Tim, while Tigger (Jim
Cummings) exudes a Fred-like joie de vivre. Meanwhile, the narrator,
with some help from the storybook and Tigger, provides the proper
ghostly framework. The tale’s inspiration is most obvious toward the
end, when Rabbit repents, first distraught over his friendless future,
then “giddy as a school bunny” that he’s been given a second chance. At
this point, if anyone still hasn’t gotten the reference, Tigger, with a
broad wink at the viewers, demands, “What the Dickens - and I do mean
Dickens - is going on here?”
Tigger gets all the best lines in
this flick, with energetic bursts of jibberish that lead to him
uttering one of my favorite words: onomatopoeia! Equally random: at one
point, while showing Roo all of his Easter gear, Tigger accidentally
unearths a dreidel. “Whoops, wrong holiday!” he amends. He also gets to
sing a couple of short songs, as do most of the main characters. Eeyore
(Peter Cullen) doesn’t have any songs to himself, but his fondness for a
pair of fluffy bunny ears is good for a lot of laughs. While none of
the musical numbers are still rattling around in my head, they’re fun in
context.
Among the Special Features, the First Look at The Magical World of Winnie the Pooh is most worth perusing. What it amounts to is two episodes of the aforementioned series; Magical World
was evidently the name of a set of DVDs containing episodes from the
show. The first, in which Rabbit decides to give away his beloved bunny
bookend because he believes he will never find its mate, fits
particularly well with the movie, while the second is a fun romp
involving a scrawny heffalump and his burly, heavily allergic father.
Sounds of Spring features three clickable scenes; click on the arrow
pointing to an object and hear a corresponding noise. This activity is
rather fun, but Decorate Rabbit’s House is annoying, since it is
constantly correcting the improper placement of decorations. After a
movie in which Rabbit’s fastidiousness proves to be problematic, it
seems to go against message to insist decorations go in one particular
spot when they would look just as good someplace else. Another feature
includes step-by-step instructions for making a sort of butterfly puppet
that looks neat but seems like it would fall apart easily. The rest of
the features are DVD registration and a preview for Pooh’s Heffalump Movie.
Even though Springtime for Roo
is an Easter story, its Dickensian nature renders it a suitable choice
for this time of year, since it’s fun to compare it to the oodles of
other versions of A Christmas Carol floating around. I’m still
waiting for Eeyore to get a centric Pooh movie, but I have no complaints
about this outing with Rabbit and Roo.
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