Metacritic reviews

As sweet as honey but without the stickiness, Christopher Robin is a gentle delight — for children, and for former children.

Christopher Robin takes a classic story with characters people know and love and breathes new life into them, delivering an important reminder to balance life and all its qualities through strong symbolism.

It’s charming and filled with wonderful performances, and has a nuanced story that will have adults walking out of the theater thinking about their own inner Pooh, and questioning why the hell they’re working so hard.

Even when Christopher Robin stumbles or steers itself into a corner, it never stops trying to understand what people lose when they let go of the things they love. The movie sells itself by keeping one foot on the ground at all times.

There’s no end to the schmaltz in Winnie the Pooh’s honey pot, yet Disney’s live-action Christopher Robin also tosses in enough charm and tomfoolery for a sufficiently delightful hang with the iconic bear.

It all fits together a little too well, too predictably and, well, too Disney. Pooh and company have always been a wonderfully neurotic bunch, but in Forster’s polished film, they’re a little suffocated, a little lifeless. Any semblance of authentic childlike glee remains purely theoretical.

The fuzzy residents of the 100-Acre Wood cutely convert to the real world in Christopher Robin, a mildly entertaining film that'll remind kids and grown-ups alike of the fun that can be had in doing absolutely nothing important.

There may be plenty of charming, classic Pooh-isms sprinkled throughout Christopher Robin, but the film just can’t manage to bring the same level of poignance and wisdom to its own story.

It’s a slow, sluggish and whimsy-deficient movie that seems designed to entertain neither children nor adults, and the film’s script opens a Pandora’s Box of a plot twist.

The whole affair feels like a desperate, big-budget response to last year’s far superior and non-Disney “Goodbye, Christopher Robin.”