Winnie the Pooh

Directed by Don Hall (G)

***

Disney’s latest incarnation of Winnie the Pooh “succeeds by embracing old-fashioned movie pleasures,” said Scott Bowles in USA Today. In a summer full of over-the-top CGI effects and overused 3-D, Pooh is “unabashedly 2-D, a proud cartoon of primary colors.” John Cleese narrates a tale that may sound familiar to fans of these A.A. Milne–created characters: Pooh and his colorful gang of friends must help Eeyore the donkey find his missing tail while standing up to the unreal threat of an imaginary monster. Clocking in at just over an hour, the movie is “precisely the right length for squirmy tots,” said Sandie Angulo Chen in The Washington Post. Yet the screenwriters have found time to squeeze in some gentle humor that’s smart enough to keep the target audience’s parents from squirming too. Unlike so many of today’s films, said Rafer Guzman in Newsday, the whole production seems more devoted to “capturing the imagination” than “providing distraction.”

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