A review of the new "Winnie the Pooh"

I finally took the kids to see "Winnie the Pooh" today, as I had $3 Movie Cash I won on a package of M&Ms that expires at the end of the month.  My verdict?  It should have gone straight to video.

Movies simply don't mean the same thing today that they did when I was Faith's age.  Back then, a movie was an event; if you didn't see it in theaters, you simply wouldn't see it unless and until it was re-released or it was shown on TV, most likely abridged to fit in the commercials.  You went to the movies or you didn't watch it.  VCRs, not to mention DVDs, streaming, and various cable movie channels, were the beginning of the end for that model.  Thirty years later, if you're going to go to the trouble and expense of driving to the movie theater, it's for an experience you can't get at home: special effects and explosions on a huge screen with state-of-the-art audio (hence, Transformers and comic-book movies and their ilk), or the ability to see what's going to be an immediate water-cooler topic and join in the conversation (hence, the typically huge drop-off from opening weekend box office to the following week).

For a while, 3D has been the draw to attract audiences, but people are already tiring of it, mostly because the number of movies that can be plausibly improved by being shown in 3D is limited.  The sky-lantern sequence in the 3D version of "Tangled" is breathtaking, but do we really need to see "The Smurfs" in 3D?  When the 21st-century version of the technology was new, it was a draw in and of itself, but the "wow" factor has already worn off.  Remember how amazing the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" were when the movie was new?  Have you ever tried to sit through it now that you can see superior effects in TV commercials?

So, back to Pooh.  It's just not a "movie" in today's sense of the word.  I spent $13.50 on 3 tickets after my Movie Cash.  So not worth it.  But I would happily have spent $13.50 on the DVD for the kids to watch around the house.  I would have chuckled at parts, as I watched from across the room while doing other things.  Just sitting there with nothing to do but stare at the screen, I kept wanting to check the time.  And it was only an hour long!

As for the content of the movie, the beginning where we're focusing on Pooh and his rumbly tumbly really drags, but once the whole cast is given something to do in tracking and catching the wild Backson, the pace picks up.  Eeyore and Tigger come off best and have a funny action-song where Tigger tries to turn Eeyore into Tigger Two.  Owl's song about the Backson where he promises the others he isn't just making up all the things he's obviously making up is funny.  And the narrator is John Cleese, which ought to make the film just a little bit better than it is.  But overall: yeah, wait for the DVD release.  There is absolutely nothing about this movie which demands it be seen on the big screen, and I'd probably be a bigger fan if it hadn't harbored delusions of grandeur about not being a direct-to-video release in the first place.