Well I for one wouldn't have put money on a cinematic highlight of 2018 being Ewan McGregor's chemistry with a CGI bear. In fact, it's a damned shame that this (repeated) display is the best thing about Disney's Christopher Robin. As a demo-reel for what a great physical and emotional actor Ewan can be, this movie is worth every penny of the ticket.
But it's… well, it's Disney. We know what to expect from the sentimental live-action fare they present, yet it still stings a little when it's not as perfect as their animation. Don't get me wrong, Christopher Robin is a solid movie, but it's one you've seen elsewhere - and not just in Winnie The Pooh stories. Great care is taken to gently lay All The Hits into the script in terms of callbacks and catchphrases, and there are some solid gold moments in here. But it feels like a large idea written in small words, while Jon Brion and Geoff Zanelli's score tells the audience what they should be feeling at any given moment.
Never quite patronising but certainly simplistic, all the emotional buttons are pushed in a way which suggests a safe-play from the studio. Some great deadpan comedy performances get slightly lost in a script which uses twee slapstick as its default setting. I'm not entirely sure that director Marc Forster is the best candidate for the job (despite his excellent work with McGregor, as noted), having previously delivered the lacklustre World War Z and the oft-derided Quantum Of Solace. Moving around the genres is perfectly permissible, but mastering one along the way is preferable.
Christopher Robin's story itself is based on a solid enough premise of nostalgia, family values and paternal redemption, but it's a formula which Disney have already done to perfection with their first Mary Poppins outing. December hares toward us with considerable expectation, to put it mildly.
The film all but abandons its core-message after the first act, racing for the finish line and becoming that movie where the businessman tells his snide boss to stick it up his backside while making an inspirational speech with his daughter at the back of the room that results in a gradual-applause response. Basically, a Jim Carrey film in the late 1990s.
Christopher Robin is good, but despite its high-points you know it should be better.
On the plus side, the recurring motif of the red balloon was very reminiscent of IT, and during the dreamlike underwater-sequence I did expect Ewan to pick up then discard two opium suppositories. Damn that PG certificate.
It feels like a property with the cultural legacy of Winnie The Pooh perhaps deserves more, but that comes down to Disney's stewardship of the brand more than anything else, which is by no means a new issue.
At some point in its development, Christopher Robin was a fantastic movie. But this feels like Disney are lazily trying to ape the success of Paddington, and for that they'll need a little less schmaltz and lot more sincerity…
Well, Paddington, frankly.
Not that it really should be.
Wet Sunday afternoon, sure.
When it comes down to a sensible price it'll be a one to have on the shelf.
Yes, even though I've done little but complain about it.
It's because I care, honest.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Well, there was me thinking I was going to be distracted by the kid throughout Goodbye Christopher Robin, when in actual fact I was more concerned with Margot Robbie being picked up by the rozzers at any moment for failing to control an accent in a built-up screenplay. Seriously, what the hell was that?
It's amazing to think that Robbie and Domhnall Gleeson starred together before in About Time, where the former's Contemporary Middle Class Brit™ accent was absolutely flawless, yet here she is appearing in a film set between the World Wars, and her Upper Class Brit™ accent keeps swerving back to her native Australian (which is usually a fantastic blank-canvass for voice-work, unless you're Sam Worthington). Now I want Robbie to take a recurring role in Eastenders, just to see which way it goes at the other end of the scale. On the occasions when she's clearly trying too hard (almost every other line), she almost sounds German.
It's frankly unforgivable that a performance so sloppy should ever reach the editing suite, let alone the cinema screen, and I blame the director entirely for apparently not having the cojones to be like "Okay, cut! Right Domhnall? Great work, keep that up, you sound for all the world like a young Obi-Wan Kenobi and I know of at least one film-blogger who will delight in that irony. Young Will? You're doing fine but go easy on the cutesy-cutsey, we're not sponsored by Hallmark, you know. And Margot. Oh, Margot. Please try to remember that Daphne Milne was a socialite from Battersea, not a Berlin spy who's been hiding out in Sydney for a decade but suddenly finds herself trapped improvising a role in the British countryside. Let's go again, and… ACTION.
Hmm? The film itself? It was okay, I suppose. Not really my bag to begin with; costume melodrama, a bit twee, seems to skip over large chunks of time where important things happen (like the publishing of All The Books). Then again, I have no strong feelings either way for Winnie The Pooh if I'm being honest. You'll probably enjoy it, though.
Also yeah, the kid's infuriating.
The kind of stiff-upper-lip drama that doesn't quite romanticise*1 the aftermath of a world war, but really can't go into it all properly because of its BBFC rating.
Sunday afternoon DVD, tops.
What, to give a convenient, heavy-handed and simplistic account of a difficult relationship in a time of great uncertainty? Probably.
Gleeson is fantastic, then again he's rarely anything but.
But I don't think we've seen his best work yet.
I shouldn't imagine so.
There are four flashback scenes to the Western Front in this film, and not a single Wilhelm Scream to be heard. Ridiculous. I mean if nothing else, you'd expect a movie with General Hux and Harley Quinn to have more shouting in it, frankly.
Level 1: As mentioned, General Hux is in this, as is Phoebe 'as yet un-named role in the upcoming Han Solo film' Waller-Bridge.
*1 Speaking of romanticising, why the actual fuck is the Elizabeth Tower (aka 'Big Ben' at the Houses of Parliament) on the poster, there? The Milnes move away from London to the countryside during Act I, only go back very briefly and at no point does anyone walk along the banks of the Thames. Half of this poster is bullshit. Is this for the American audiences? I think they're already sold on account of it being "quintessentially British" mate, you don't have to fucking lie to them. This has made me more angry than the accent-thing, if I'm being honest. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
