The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

"The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" combines the three original featurettes based on A.A. Milne's original Pooh stories (the first two of which were produced under Walt Disney's guidance) with some new brief linking segments and a new, touching epilogue. Although ultimately Americanised, the original wit and tone of A.A. Milne is captured well, something that a lot of subsequent Disney Pooh product can't claim. Adapting E.H. Shepard's lovely illustrations with a touch of the Disney style, it contains so many wonderful, whimsical moments - Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit's front door, Piglet being blown away by the wind, Tigger shocking Pooh with tales of hefalumps and woozles - plus a wonderful array of tunes from the Sherman Brothers songbook.

The supposed original intention with the Pooh property was to produce a feature, but was eventually reconfigured as a running series of featurettes with the option of compiling them to create a feature-length release. Re-combining the shorts into a feature was seen as a sort of tribute to Walt Disney's original intention, but it does ultimately seem a bit disconnecting. In particular, the style and quality of the later "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too" segment doesn't quite match that of the two preceding chapters. As a result, I do think the three segments perhaps work a bit better as shorts of their own, but nonetheless, the material is utterly charming and still works reasonably well in a feature compilation format. Worth a look.