"GROWING UP WITH WINNIE THE POOH – WAVE 2"
DVD Review
by Kevin Carr
| MOVIE: **1/2 (out of 5 stars)
DVD EXPERIENCE: *1/2 (out of 5 stars) Studio: Disney Back to DVD Review Home |  |
Maybe I’m getting grumpy as I get older. Maybe my kids are just not as turned on by Winnie the Pooh as they were just a short year ago. Maybe I’m just cynical because I’ve seen the same short cartoons cycled through various titles in the DVD release library.
I’ve had more ups and downs with my relationship with Winnie the Pooh than a standard New Yorker in marriage therapy. I used to hate it. Then, I saw how much it touched my kids’ imagination. Then I just started to get tired of it again.
I will admit that I still love the old theatrical short subjects. Like the march of the pink elephants in “Dumbo,” the psychotropic fever dream of Pooh’s about heffalumps and woozles is still a piece of cinematic beauty.
But with these new volumes of “Growing Up With Winnie the Pooh,” it’s all drawn from the old televisions show “The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.” My kids are only 3 and 5, and we have seen some of these cartoons show up on at least two or three other collections. Granted, there are a couple of them we haven’t seen yet, but I can’t imagine that so few were made that such duplication was necessary.
Part of what forces the choices of cartoons are the themes of the DVDs. The new releases have the following themes: “Love & Friendship” and “It’s Playtime With Pooh.” The first reinforces concepts like helping friends, honesty, respecting others and confidence. We’re left with Piglet, Tigger and Rabbit getting lessons in helping others and what gives them self confidence.
For example, one of the often seen shorts is “Stripes,” in which Tigger’s stripes are washed off, and no one believes he’s Tigger any more. (Hey, no one ever accused the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood of being all that bright.)
The other disc has a strong sports theme. It teaches manners, responsibility, working together and sharing.
No one is going to argue that these values presented in these volumes aren’t good to teach your children. And when it comes to children, I’ve said before, you can’t go wrong with Pooh. It’s the parents that I’m thinking about. Unless you engage the FastPlay option and let the DVD run ad nauseum in the other room in front of your kids, you’re gonna have to face it yourself. And those old 1980s cartoons just don’t hold a candle to the old fashioned theatrical shorts.
Still, you can do a lot worse when it comes to kids videos.
The “Playtime with Pooh” disc contains a virtual soccer game in the special features, while the “Love & Friendship” contains a search-and-find game along with a sing-along of “Up, Down, Touch the Ground” from the first Winnie the Pooh short back in the 60s. This is, of course, the best part of the DVD.
Specifications: Dolby Digital. Fullscreen aspect ration (1.33:1). French and Spanish language tracks. English subtitles for the hearing impaired.
