Christopher Robin Faces Some Grown-Up Problems in Winnie the Pooh: Growing Up

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.

Ebenezer Bunny Gets a New Shot at Easter in Springtime With Roo

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.