Movie Info
Movie Name: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Genre(s): Animated/Family/Musical
Release Date(s): March 11, 1977
MPAA Rating: G
Step inside Pooh’s world
Christopher Robin has a friend…a bumbling bear named Pooh. Pooh only has a few things on his mind and predominately it is eating and honey. With other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Woods, Pooh and Christopher have many adventures including a trip to the Honey Tree and the arrival of a strange animal calling himself Tigger.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the twenty-second entry in the Walt Disney Animated Classic series. Following Robin Hood in 1973, Disney adapted popular stories from Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928) by A. A. Milne. The film is a composite film and made up of three old shorts and one new short.
Stuck in Rabbit’s hole
The first part of the film is made up of “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree” which first aired before The Ugly Dachshund in 1966. It adapted a story from Winnie-the-Pooh and allegedly the estate of Milne wasn’t happy with the portrayal. In our home this segment kind of resonates due to the line “Tut-tut looks like rain” which has always been said by my family on a cloudy blustery day.
The second feature was “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day” and originally aired before The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit in 1968. The short won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and adapts parts of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. This was always a favorite of mine due to the Heffalumps and Woozles and the introduction of Tigger.
The movie incorporates the book…literally
The third part of the film was “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too” which was based on The House at Pooh Corner. It originally aired before The Island at the Top of the World in 1974 and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. This segment is mostly about Tigger, and Tigger has ballooned today into his own franchise with the release of The Tigger Movie in 2000.
The final portion of the film is new for the movie and adapts the end of The House at Pooh Corners which is a bit of coda in which Christopher Robin is about to “grow-up” and leave the Hundred Acre Woods. It is sad and bittersweet and a nice ending to a story…it also feels a bit like Toy Story 3 ripped it off.
Christopher Robin says goobye to his best friend…
I love the original A. A. Milne animation for his novels and never really got into the Walt Disney version of the character (though I do like the live action opening of the film and the incorporation of the books in the animation). I also have to say that the vocals for the film are fantastic, and I can’t imagine the voice of Pooh without hearing Sterling Holloway, Piglet without hearing John Fiedler, Tigger without hearing Paul Winchell, or Eeyor without hearing Ralph Wright. Sebastian Cabot also does an excellent job as the actively involved narrator.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a nice short Disney film. I have a hard time accepting this as a full-length film since almost all the parts were aired before, and since its release, Winnie the Pooh has often been used as fill in stories for other Disney productions when a film ran short on TV. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was followed a little later the same year by The Rescuers.
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Love this movie, and this is one of my favorite films of all time, and the Milne stories are just as great.
According to what I read, the first short of Pooh actually was received well by US audiences/critics, and UK audiences, but British critics hated it and accused Disney of “murdering” Pooh (they haven’t seen the 2011 Pooh film, THAT was murdering Pooh to me). Ernest Shepherd, the original illustrator, thought it was a travesty, but Daphne Milne said she rather liked it.
British critics loved Blustery Day though, and I’m sure Tigger Too also.