Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor)

Last year when I put the loosely biographical film ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ on my wishlist, Amazon recommended another film, confusingly called just ‘Christopher Robin’. The reviews weren’t quite as good but it sounded interested - if a tad weird - so I added that to my wishlist too, and was delighted to receive it (as well as the other one) for Christmas last year.

We watched ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ about six weeks ago, and thought it an outstanding film, well worth seeing. Then we watched ‘Christopher Robin’ last night; it was good that we left a few weeks’ gap since of course the characters were played by different actors. This is a Disney story rather than having any reality in it, other than some rapidly shown drawings from AA Milne’s classic books.

This film opens with the animals in the Hundred Acre Wood, presumably CGI versions, having a goodbye party for their friend Christopher Robin as he is sent to boarding school. But there are no scenes from school; we next meet him as an adult (brilliantly played by Ewan McGregor). From this point all is fictional: he is known as Mr Robin (rather than Milne), and he works for a luggage factory. He is married to Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) and they have a daughter called Madeline (Bronte Carmichael).

Christopher has forgotten his childhood friends, and what used to matter to him. He is caught up in his work, albeit reluctantly at times. We meet him as he’s about to take his wife and daughter to their cottage for the weekend, only to discover that he’s expected to work hard to find some way of cutting the company’s expenses.

There’s a rather strange mixture of realism and fantasy in this film. Since the image on the front of the DVD shows it, it’s no spoiler to say that one of the childhood animals - who walk and talk in the hundred acre wood - emerges into London and finds his old friend. But Christopher Robin is not entirely pleased to see him, particularly when people around him start noticing that he has a talking stuffed animal.

There are some cleverly choreographed scenes as chaos takes over the household, forcing Christopher to travel down to the cottage, where his wife and daughter have gone on their own, to try to restore his old friend to his natural surroundings.

Of course the storyline is rather predictable. Work contrasts with family life, not just for Christopher but for his daughter who is very academic and is soon to be sent to boarding school. She doesn’t really know how to play at all. It’s classic Disney, and becomes more so as the film progresses. There’s a villain - Christopher’s boss - who is really quite unpleasant, but is ousted eventually, and there’s a happy ending when everything falls nicely into place.

But despite there being no real surprises, it’s surprisingly cute, amusing at times, and even poignant towards the end. It could provide a good reminder to serious folk that it’s important to play, that families matter, and that we should not forget our childhood stuffed animals.

The rating is PG, which seems about right; there’s no bad language, no innuendoes or even partial nudity. There are very brief war scenes but nothing too scary. Perhaps a very sensitive young child might be worried by the scene involving a ‘heffalump’; maybe some young children wouldn’t really appreciate the theme of a man absorbed by work and neglecting his wife and daughter. But for anyone over the age of about eight or nine, who doesn’t mind some bizarrely surreal scenes, I would recommend this.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews