Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin

Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin (also known as Winnie the Pooh's Most Grand Adventure in some countries) is a 1997 American direct-to-video animated adventure comedy-drama film and series finale of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh co-written, co-produced, and directed by Karl Geurs. The film follows Pooh and his friends on a journey to find and rescue their friend Christopher Robin from the "skull". Along the way, the group confront their own insecurities throughout the search, facing and conquering them in a series of events where they are forced to act beyond their own known limits, thus discovering their true potential. Unlike the film's predecessors, this film is an entirely original story, not based on any of A. A. Milne's classic stories (although some elements derive from "In Which Rabbit Has a Busy Day and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings" and "In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place and We Leave Them There" from The House at Pooh Corner).

Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin
2006 edition DVD cover art
Directed byKarl Geurs
Produced by
Written by
  • Carter Crocker
  • Karl Geurs
Based onCharacters created
by A. A. Milne
Starring
Narrated byDavid Warner
Music byCarl Johnson
Production
company
Distributed byWalt Disney Home Video
Release date
  • August 5, 1997 (1997-08-05)
Running time
85 minutes[2]
Country
LanguageEnglish

Plot

On the last day of summer, Christopher Robin is unable to tell his friend Winnie-the-Pooh some sad news, and leaves him with the advice, "You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think," but Pooh does not clearly understand. The next morning, Pooh discovers a honey pot with an attached note; however, he does not notice it even after getting honey all over it. He decides to ask Christopher Robin about the honey pot, but can't find him. He goes around to his friends Piglet, Tigger, Rabbit, and Eeyore to ask if they've seen Christopher Robin, but no one has. They find the note but are not able to read it, so they ask Owl for help. From misinterpreting the note and his own romantic imagination of adventure, Owl deduces that Christopher Robin has gone to a far away, mysterious and dangerous place called "Skull", a cave where the monstrous "Skullasaurus" resides and is requesting help. Owl equips the group with a map and sends them into the "Great Unknown" of the Hundred Acre Wood.

During their journey through the Great Unknown, as they are seemingly hunted by the Skullasaurus, the group slowly begins to realize just how helpless they are without Christopher Robin in the outside world. Piglet, Tigger, and Rabbit come to believe they do not have the courage, strength, or intelligence respectively to go on; Piglet is abducted by a swarm of butterflies in a tranquil field, leaving him feeling scared and helpless, Tigger plummets into a deep gorge and is unable to bounce out to safety, eventually causing the others to fall in with him. Rabbit continuously makes poor leadership decisions following Owl's inaccurate map. Pooh tries to comfort them each with the advice Christopher Robin had given him, but fails due to his inability to remember what he said. When Rabbit finally breaks down, admitting he has no idea where they are going, the group comes to terms with the fact that they are lost and helpless without Christopher Robin, and take shelter in a nearby cave. While everyone is asleep, Pooh laments on getting no closer to finding Christopher Robin.

The next morning, the five friends realize they had spent the night in the Skull Cave. The group enters and splits up to find Christopher Robin, and though Rabbit, Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet eventually reunite, they are scared away by Pooh's distorted reflection as he walks towards them from behind a crystal wall, mistaking him for the Skullasaurus. Pooh stumbles and slides down a half crystal pipe and winds up getting stuck in a small gap in the cave's crystals. Meanwhile, the four others find the "Eye of the Skull" where Christopher Robin supposedly is trapped. Believing Pooh to have been eaten alive by the Skullasaurus, they rise past their fears and doubts and make their way to the Eye of the Skull. Upon seeing his friends' bravery, Pooh excitedly manages to free himself from the tight gap, only to accidentally slide down a slippery rock and get trapped in a deep pit where he is unable to find a way out. While there, he realizes that Christopher Robin is still with him in his heart, even when they are not together, just as Christopher Robin had promised. After Piglet, Rabbit, Tigger, and Eeyore enter the Eye, they are found by Christopher Robin who has been searching for them as well. He reveals that Owl had missed some of the words in his note; he was only at school (which Owl had mistakenly pronounced as "Skull") and wanted Pooh to "help himself" to the honey pot he gave him. The roars of the Skullasaurus they have been plagued by are actually the noises of Pooh's tummy rumbling, as he hadn't eaten anything during their adventure.

After Christopher Robin rescues Pooh from the pit (leaving behind the honey pot that started the adventure), the five exit the Skull Cave, only to discover that from the outside, it and all the other locations on the map were not nearly as big, nor as scary as they seemed. They only looked big and scary because their fears got the better of their imaginations, indicating that the Skullasaurus isn't real. They all head back home and that evening, Christopher Robin says he will be returning to school the next day. Pooh declares that he will always be waiting for him, and the two happily watch the sunset, knowing they will always have each other in the sanctuary of the Hundred Acre Wood.

Cast

Reception

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes assessed an approval rating of 33% based on 9 reviews and an average score of 4.3/10.[3] George Blooston of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C grade, calling it "treacly" and criticized its lack of "grown up-wit [and] child psychology" from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.[4] David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews called the film "tedious", and Alex Sandell of Juicy Cerebellum felt that Disney "always sucked with Pooh."[5] Jane Louise Boursaw of Kaboose praised the film's songwriting and animation.[6] Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film "two thumbs up" on their review show as well.[7]

Home video

The film was released on VHS in the United States on August 5, 1997.[8] It was later issued on VHS in the United Kingdom on October 13, 1997. The 1997 VHS release has the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection logo, despite being a direct-to-video film.

It was released for the first time on "Special Edition" DVD in 2006, with digitally remastered picture and sound quality. It includes a featurette "Pooh's Symphony" and the 1968 film, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.[9]

The film, alongside Piglet's Big Movie, was released on Blu-ray for the first time as a Disney Movie Club exclusive on July 17, 2018 to coincide with its belated 20th anniversary and the live-action Christopher Robin film, released over two weeks later.[10]

Elements of the plot - such as the skull, and the mis-read map - were used in the 2001 videogame Party Time with Winnie the Pooh.

Sources

The film's plot is based primarily on two A. A. Milne stories from The House at Pooh Corner: "In which Rabbit has a busy day and we learn what Christopher Robin does in the mornings," and "In which Christopher Robin and Pooh come to an Enchanted Place and we leave them there".

Songs

The film's songs were written by Michael Abbott and Sarah Weeks.[11]

See also

References
  1. https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b85799ee8
  2. "Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin (1997)". Allmovie. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
  3. "Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 2011-07-28. Retrieved 2012-02-22.
  4. "Pooh's Grand Adventure - Entertainment Weekly". Archived from the original on 2009-04-21. Retrieved 2012-02-24.
  5. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-12-13. Retrieved 2012-06-02.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-12-12. Retrieved 2012-02-22.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. http://siskelandebert.org/video/KHMRAUNG63OR/Event-Horizon--Cop-Land-1997 Archived 2017-02-01 at the Wayback Machine,
  8. Hettrick, Scott (May 16, 1997). "Home Movies". CNN. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
  9. Rizzo, Frank (April 14, 2006). "Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin". DVD Talk. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
  10. "Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin Blu-ray". Archived from the original on 2018-06-30. Retrieved 2018-07-02.
  11. Hischak, Thomas S.; Robinson, Mark A. (2013). The Disney Song Encyclopedia (2 ed.). Taylor Trade Publishing. p. 1. ISBN 9781589797130.
  1. Animation outsourced to Walt Disney Animation Japan.

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