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| What you're seeing is a screenshot of the Japanese release of "Pooh's Grand Adventure" via YouTube. |
When you look at the talent that went in to make this direct-to-video Winnie the Pooh movie, it shows how grand it can be.
Animators from the-then-operating Walt Disney Animation Japan worked very closely with Karl Geurs (the same director from "The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh") to create this very special film. It may not be the best of all of the Pooh movies released at the time, but it was something grand indeed.
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| A work-in-progress version of the beginning sequence. |
The story of its time was a wonderful piece of concept that the original didn't cover: What would happen to Pooh and the gang when Christopher Robin isn't there anymore. While the 2018 Christopher Robin movie got us more into detail, we needed to know back then what would Pooh. Tigger, Piglet, Rabbit, and Eeyore might have thought was going to happen. They're worried that with Christopher gone, they can't accomplish the things they want to do. Piglet's scared of heights, Tigger's tail isn't what he thought it would be strong enough, Rabbit just wants to follow stuff from books and maps, Eeyore just being Eeyore, and Pooh feeling lost without his friend around. That drives the story down to a mature level that even kids might understand.
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| POOH: It's the first day of Autumn! |
Pooh's Grand Adventure has some amazing animation despite its limited approach (limited-yet-high-quality animation), making it look like Studio Ghibli of-the-then-released "Princess Mononoke" and the-then-upcoming "Spirited Away" had made a Winnie the Pooh movie. Everything that includes the backgrounds and the locations introduced to this film look so beautifully crafted, you forget that it's the 100 Acre Wood.
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| Compare the backgrounds from "Spirited Away" to the location used in "Pooh's Grand Adventure" You can quite tell these 2 are wonderful in their own special way. |
The film's music is brilliant as well. Whether it's "Forever and Ever" or "Wherever You Are", the songs go from adventurous to down-right sad and tear-jerky. The film's score (done beautifully by Carl Johnson, who'd later score "Piglet's Big Movie") also adds the scenes that might need to be both charming and in some cases, dangerous to pull through. The moment we get sucked into the 100 Acre Wood when the film starts to the last shot of Pooh and Christopher's favourite spot has to have detail on how the music should sound.
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| Trust me, "Wherever You Are" (when sung by Pooh) can really make you cry. |
The film also has time for the audience to experience what the characters are going through at any scene. Here are 3 examples: Piglet is too scared to conquer his fear of heights. Sure he lives in a tree that is 2 stories inside, but to think of it, that's the first step of conquering that fear. The audience's relation to that is to conquer the fear of heights by taking one step at a time. Piglet learns this too when he realizes that he's braver than he believed. Tigger's tail, when looked upon by Tigger, feels a bit weak when he fails to reach Piglet in time or when he tries to get the other half of the map. We do relate to when people feel like they can't lift heavy objects that they can't carry/move around with. By the end of the film, Tigger realizes that he's stronger than he seen his tail do. And finally, Pooh expresses sorrow when he realizes he can't find Christopher. The audience can relate that sorrow, say, if someone close to them leaves them behind or even death in the family strikes. Pooh and the audience then learns that even though the loved ones are away from one another, they're still together... inside. As Pooh stated best: "Perhaps the place where you are, is not on a map."
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| Rabbit, Tigger, Piglet, and Pooh learn a lot by the end of the film. |
At the end, Pooh's Grand Adventure had made fans either hate it or love it due to its mature level of lessons learned in the film, and tons of character growth within. The wonders that the talented artists, voice actors, musicians, and even the director had brought to "The Search for Christopher Robin" is a heartwarming-yet-charming story about friendship, bravery, strength, being smart, and the grandest and the most extraordinary of all of Pooh's adventures by far from The Walt Disney Company. "Christopher Robin (2018) came close to achieve this goal with a concept of doing nothing that often lead to the very best something, but this was something big back when the film was marketed as "the first all-new Winnie the Pooh movie in 20 years" in August 5th, 1997.
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| Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin (C) Disney Enterprises, Inc. Spirited Away (C) Studio Ghibli |
