Christopher Robin, the boy who had countless adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood, has grown up and lost his way. Now it’s up to his spirited and loveable stuffed animals, Winnie The Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, and the rest of the gang, to rekindle their friendship and remind him of endless days of childlike wonder and make-believe, when doing nothing was the very best something.
13 May Christopher Robin (2018)
Stuck in the Box
The story is conventional Disney, and in the trend of expanding the reach of established properties, with as little actual drama as possible. Three things are notable to me.
This was shot on video, with a deliberate nod to cheap TeeVee productions from decades ago. Every visual choice was designed to reference a TeeVee experience, presumably a remembered one. Highly cropped two-shots; faces; simple pans. It was obvious that this was to reduce costs, with the most obvious being the dominant stationary shots. Stationary shots are the easiest to composite in CGI creatures. To hide the static nature, they added a post-production wobble to the camera that was anything but natural (the way a camera operator would be). A camera of little brain.
Ewan McGregor is a sort of icon for me, because he carried one of my favourites, “The Pillow Book”. Seeing him anywhere else colours the project; I expect some perhaps hidden mastery. In “Book”, he became priceless paper for the stories behind and inside the film. Here, we also have written stories outside that become real inside, but our Ewan’s paper this time is worthless, literally blown away in the wind.
Posted in 2022
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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