Winnie the Pooh series

Christopher Robin (2018)

Christopher Robin (2018)

(Netflix Streaming, December 2019) Disney studio executives must have terrible family lives considering the number of family movies they greenlight that include a father who must learn to spend less time at work and more time with the kids. (Do people really need to be told that stuff, or is this the kind of unarguable dramatic arc that gets a free pass every time?)  Christopher Robin is the latest in this long trend, as it features Winnie the Pooh’s human protagonist as a grown-up man without a shred of imagination who must choose between overtime and family time, not to mention loyalty to his employees or efficiently cost-cutting for his company. You will not be surprised by the choice he makes early in the film, or the one he makes at the conclusion of it. There is an obvious mechanistic aspect to Marc Forster’s direction that comes from the screenplay itself—I won’t even bother describing the middle portion of the plot, so clearly is it developed from the central premise. But even in its CGI-heavy execution, the film does manage to poke now and then at the innate charm of the Hundred Acre Wood. The cast of characters comes to life in convincing fashion (the film was nominated for several Special Effects awards) and the script doesn’t send unexpected curveballs. Still, I wonder about the limits of using a midlife crisis as an excuse for a family film—surely there’s no need to bother kids with mild adult-onset depression. Why are Disney executives regurgitating their therapy sessions on-screen?