The Book of Pooh: Stories from the Heart (2001)
I know The Book of Pooh: Stories from the Heart was made for small children, but that excuse only goes so far. It has many charming moments and even as an adult I laughed numerous times, but this is not a great-, or even good-looking movie. Pieced together from episodes of the Disney Channel Playhouse television series, it’s essentially an anthology with Winnie the Pooh (Jim Cummings), Rabbit (Ken Sansom), Piglet (John Fiedler) and Tigger (also voiced by Jim Cummings) distracting themselves with stories from Christopher Robin's book while looking for their friend’s journal (Paul Tiesler plays Christopher Robin).
Before I talk about the individual stories, I need to address the visuals. Pooh and his friends are all puppets, which is fine as long as you don't compare them to the hand-drawn cartoons we’ve seen before. They blink but otherwise, their movements aren't fluid. You can tell they’re hand puppets whose limbs are moved by strings. Additionally, the characters are clearly shot against a green screen and then cut out using computer. Tigger and Rabbit suffer the worst from this choice, as their whiskers appear and disappear all the time. Then we get to the backgrounds, which are terrible. When we see a forest, it looks like something out of a 64-Bit video game: flat shapes positioned into a «+» to create unconvincing 3D objects. The puppets look generally fine but everything else is an eyesore. Will small children notice? I'm not sure but you're wondering about my opinion, so there it is.
In this first story, Pooh decides to have a grand adventure by going over the neighboring hill and seeing what is on the other side. When he gets turned around and ends up back in where he came from, he assumes everyone he meets is a stranger that just happens to look like his friends.
This story embodies everything I like about Winnie the Pooh. Its a sweet, silly story with laughs and without villains or danger. The only portion which disappoints is a musical number by Pooh. It adds nothing to the story and isn’t particularly good.
Tigger decides to train Piglet to be his replacement so that no one (Especially Rabbit) is left without a Tigger while he goes on an adventure. Â
Basically, I’ve got the same praises for this story as I did the first. It's simple, with some good gags and sweet moments. The song featured here is better than the first, but still nothing special.
This segment focusses on a character I'd never heard of before, a helpful bird named Kessie (voiced by Stephanie D’Abruzzo). She goes to Owl (voiced by Andre Stojka) and learns about all the different things birds are good at.
Not much to say about this one. It was alright I guess, played out as I expected it to.
Greenhorn with a Green Thumb
Tigger wants to become better friends with Rabbit so he asks his long-eared friend to teach him about gardening.
This one repeats much of what we saw in Tigger’s Replacement. Of all of the episodes, they couldn’t pick a Rabbit-centric one that was a bit more original? The message of this story (all of them have a message) is different though, so it’s not all bad.
Night of the Waking Tigger
Tigger realizes he wastes a lot of his time sleeping, and that while he’s in bed there’s bound to be missing out on excitement. His friends try to convince him not to “give up sleep”, with not-so-good results.
This is the story I enjoyed best (perhaps second best) out of all of them. It may actually appeal to any parents watching since children always like to stay up way past their bedtime. Consider showing this one to your bratty little spawn.
It’s Eeyore’s Tailiversary (not to be confused with his birthday). The inhabitants of the 100 Acre Wood decide to throw him a surprise party, but that means having to dodge Eeyore’s questions and keeping secrets from him until the right time and place.
This Eeyore-centered tail contains a decent song, some humorous moments and shows some nice exchanges of friendship between the different characters. Like most of these stories, I don’t really have that much to say about it because all of the flaws are the same as in the first tale and the praises also apply. Note that Peter Cullen (who has voiced many classic cartoon characters) voices Eeyore.
The Book of Pooh: Stories from the Heart isn't even for kids, it's for children under 6. When you pop the disc into your player, the movie’s narrator even explains how the DVD menu works. Do I think the picture will entertain the audience it’s meant for? I do. That still doesn’t change the quality of the visuals. Nonetheless, I can’t deny that it’s good-natured, tender, and completely harmless so I'll concede and give it a recommendation for those too young to read this review. (Fullscreen version on DVD, June 17, 2015)
