Goodbye Christopher Robin

This movie review, for a movie I hadn’t heard of, caught my eye because it is just so well written. I mean, it really seems to capture the spirit of movie and simultaneously raise questions about what the producer had in mind:

Goodbye Christopher Robin is a strange proposition. It’s a film that won’t attract many viewers who aren’t already fans of AA Milne’s classic Winnie-the-Pooh books, and yet its explicit purpose is to ensure that anyone who sees it will never enjoy those books in the same way again. Remember Saving Mr Banks? Remember how it suggested that PL Travers wrote Mary Poppins because she had an alcoholic father and a suicidal mother? Compared to Goodbye Christopher Robin, that was a feel-good treat for all the family.

Now, this doesn’t affect me, because I never read Winnie the Pooh. Although I liked Kenny Logan’s song “Back to Pooh Corner” — do you remember it? —

Christopher Robin and I walked along

Under branches lit up by the moon

Posing our questions to owl and eeyore

As our days disappeared all too soon

But I’ve wandered much further today than I should

And I can’t seem to find my way back to the wood

So help me if you can, I’ve got to get

Back to the house at Pooh corner by one

You’d be surprised there’s so much to be done

Count all the bees in the hive

Chase all the clouds from the sky

Back to the days of Christopher Robin and Pooh…

It’s a charming song, though wistful. But wistful and nostalgic are not what the movie seems to be going for:

It’s a film which might come in useful as a how-to guide for raising unhappy children.

Hmm. I do see that some critics liked the film a good deal better. It sure doesn’t sound like a film you’d take your Winnie-the-Pooh loving child to see, though.

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