When I was a kid, I had a bit of a crush on Christopher Robin. Of
course, the idea of Christopher Robin having a crush on anyone seems
pretty foreign to the world of Winnie the Pooh. However, in the video Winnie the Pooh: Growing Up, part of the Learning series of videos that use episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
to demonstrate simple lessons, it doesn’t seem quite so far out of the
realm of possibility. The two episodes on this video both deal with
Christopher Robin (Tim Hoskins) maturing, and hints of romance enter the
picture in the second episode, though they loom much larger in the
minds of his fluffy friends than his own…
Home Is Where the Home Is
- In this episode, Christopher Robin’s mom (Patricia Parris) leaves him
alone for a few hours with instructions to clean up the house and not
to disturb the bust of a very grumpy-looking Great-Grandfather Eustace.
Pooh (Jim Cummings), Piglet (John Fiedler), Tigger (Paul Winchell) and
Rabbit (Ken Sansom) try to help him tidy up the place Mary
Poppins-style, but they end up making an even bigger mess and the statue
topples in the process. Afraid to face his mother, he decides to live
in the woods, but nobody’s house seems like a good fit and taking the
first bus to who-knows-where begins to look like the best option. But is
it?
This is a fun group episode which has the above five
characters together for a majority of the story. Eeyore (Peter Cullen)
turns up a bit later, and while he’s still a sad sack, particularly
since his house keeps crumbling on him, he’s more of a sage, dispensing
bits of homespun wisdom. While the others try to help their friend run
from his problems, he is the one who gently encourages him to return
home and face them. A fun but also serious episode about taking personal
responsibility for one’s mistakes.
Grown But Not Forgotten
- This episode is one of my favorites, in part because it starts out
with Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and Rabbit playing a rousing game of
Squishball, an anything-goes, make-up-the-rules-as-you-go-along game
that I at one time declared the funnest game in the world. My brother,
my neighbor and I used to play our own version, though it was never
quite as satisfying as it is in the Hundred-Acre Wood, where there is so
much open space and so much oddball equipment and where one of the
players – Piglet – keeps getting confused for the ball.
But
that’s ultimately a small part of the episode. The bulk of it deals with
the quartet’s discovery that Christopher Robin has been invited to a
formal party – with (GASP!) girls. He has to dress up, he has to show
proper manners and he might even have to dance. At first they try to
help him get out of going, but when his mom won’t back down, Rabbit
decides to instruct him in the finer points of etiquette and Tigger
gives him dance lessons. During a practice tea party, Rabbit sternly
demonstrates the correct sipping posture: “Proper gentlemen drink
with the pinky extended – like so!” My brother and I have imitated this
little demonstration time and again even since we first saw the
episode.
While it’s not much longer than the first episode on
this video, it feels longer because there’s just so much story stuffed
into it. Although Pooh never quite understands what all the worry is
about and simply hopes Christopher Robin goes to the party and has fun,
the other three, spurred on by a goofy scenario in which Tigger imagines
Christopher Robin’s life as an adult with a wife (played by Tigger) and
a baby (played by Gopher (Michael Gough)), begin to panic. If they
can’t prove themselves sufficiently grown up stat, they are sure to lose
his friendship forever. An incredibly sweet and funny episode about the
balance between embracing new opportunities and staying true to one’s
friends.
As always, I’m a little annoyed at the way that Disney
chose to package these. It seems like a money-grubbing move to get
people to buy a whole library of videos at ten bucks a pop when you
could have a boxed DVD set that would take up a lot less room and
ultimately be less expensive. That typical complaint aside, though, I
love these two episodes, which complement each other very well, allowing
Christopher Robin to do just the tiniest bit of growing up without any
fear of his outgrowing his wonderful friends in the Hundred-Acre Wood.
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