Pooh's Heffalump Movie is an animated movie based loosely on A.A. Milne's characters, and starring Jim Cummings, Kath Soucie, John Fielder, Nikita Hopkins, Ken Sansom, Peter Cullen, Brenda Blethyn, and Kyle Stanger.
I'll say this, Disney has never quite managed to get the feel of this property right once they ran out of Milne material to adapt directly. Here, we've got the Hundred-Acre-Wood gang, minus Christopher Robin, freaking out because they find huge footprints and hear a trumpet sort of sound. Roo (Hopkins) is really our central character; the "adult" characters go searching for what they're sure is a terrifying heffalump, but it's Roo that finds one, in the personage of Lumpy (Stanger). Lumpy's just a kid, like Roo, and they happily play together until Roo tries to take Lumpy to meet his friends and Lumpy gets scared because the things on that side of the fence are terrifying OH WAIT I GET IT NOW.
Snark aside, it's cute. There are a couple of funny moments. But it's treacly and Pooh (Cummings), who is always the best grounding influence when things get crazy, barely has anything to do. Reduce the other characters down to their one-note traits and Eyeore (Cullen) is morose, Piglet (Fielder) is scared, Rabbit (Sansom) is pedantic and Tigger (also Cummings) is enthusiastic, but without Pooh to provide perspective and his simple, Tao-like wisdom (yes, I'm a fan of The Tao of Pooh), the whole thing just kind of falls flat.
This setup would have worked fine as a half-hour cartoon, but they padded it out to 68 minutes using some truly god-awful songs by Carly Simon, and the end result is cotton candy. Don't think I ever watched it before (I own it because I have children who were, at one point, small), don't think I ever shall again.
My Grade: C-
Rewatch Value: IINSIAIFWT
Next up: The Powerpuff Girls Movie
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