DVD Review
by Kevin Carr
| *** (out of 5 stars) STARRING Jim Cummings as WINNIE THE POOH and TIGGER Ken Sansom as RABBIT Jimmy Bennett as ROO John Fielder as PIGLET Peter Cullen as EEYORE David Ogden Stiers as NARRATOR Rated G Studio: Disney Directed by: Elliot M. Bour and Saul Andrew Blinkoff Back to DVD Review Home |
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When my eldest son recently got into Winnie the Pooh, I entered into that realm of parenting where you know more about the current events in the Hundred Acre Wood than you do the current events in the Middle East. Since his Pooh Bear kick started last summer, I have become intimately familiar with the stuffed animals of Christopher Robin.
A couple years ago, Disney brought back these characters to the big screen with “The Tigger Movie.” Last spring, they released “Piglet’s Big Movie.” Not too long ago, I remarked to my wife that the next movie is going to have to be about Roo. After all, Piglet and Tigger both got their shot. Roo is the next in line (and a movie just about Rabbit would be too neurotic and a movie just about Eeyore would be too depressing).
“Springtime with Roo” is the latest direct-to-video Winnie the Pooh feature by Disney. Unlike the Piglet and Tigger movies, this one did not get a wide theatrical release. It makes sense, when you factor in the 65-minute running time.
This film tells the story of Roo’s second Easter in the Hundred Acre Woods. He bounces along with his pals Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore and Winnie the Pooh to Rabbit’s house for the annual Easter egg hunt. However, Rabbit has different plans - Spring Cleaning (spelled kleening). During the clean, Roo finds all of Rabbit’s old Easter decorations and assumes that Rabbit was planning a surprise Easter party.
When Roo and the gang use the decorations to Easter-ize Rabbit’s house, Rabbit yells at everyone for not following his spring cleaning orders. With no Easter egg hunt and Rabbit upset at everyone, Easter looks like it will be canceled in the Hundred Acre Wood. It’s up to Tigger and the Narrator to bring Rabbit back into the spirit of the season.
“Springtime with Roo” tries to recapture the essence of the original Winnie the Pooh shorts that Disney made in the 1960s. It updates the familiar opening of Christopher Robin’s bedroom filled with stuffed toys, and it also includes the opening narration.
With Sebastian Cabot long since gone, David Ogden Stiers lends his voice as the narrator, and this time around, he has an integral part to the plot. Similar to his involvement in the original “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too” short, the Narrator interacts with the characters, bringing them out of the book and helping resolve the conflict. While Stire is no Sebastian Cabot, he makes a fair replacement for this role.
There’s a nice amount of extra features on this DVD, with many of them geared towards the younger viewer. The main menu screens have narration that explain how to navigate through the choices, which gives young children a chance to use the remote themselves. Fortunately, you can skip through these instruction menus so you don’t have to listen to them every time you visit a menu.
The disc contains two games which should be fun for the youngest viewers. (Of course, if you’re over the age of six, you may want to skip these.) The first, “Sounds of Spring” isn’t really a game. It presents a picture, on which the viewer can choose different elements - like crows, bees, and even characters from the movie - to hear the sounds they make.
The second game, “Decorating Rabbit’s House,” is a slightly higher-level puzzle game in which the viewer much choose which Easter decorations go where in Rabbit’s house and yard. Unfortunately, this can get frustrating at times (even for the adult) because some of the items are hard to recognize - or even duplicate items that go in different places. For example, in one decorating scene, there are two bundles of balloons that look almost identical - yet each one is specific to a spot. Even when the pleasant female menu narrator tells you very politely that you’re not putting things in the right place, it can make you feel pretty dumb not being able to master the simple game.
Other extras include a Disney Art Project, in which viewers learn how to make a butterfly mobile out of paper plates and construction paper. There are also two Pooh shorts from “The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” (now dubbed “The Magical World of Winnie the Pooh” because they’re fifteen years old) hidden under previews for the new Heffalump movie.
“Springtime with Roo” is a fun little film. It teaches the standard lessons of patience and tolerance. While the animation is better than the old television show still rerun on the Disney Channel (at least Rabbit is a solid yellow and not the odd shade of green), it isn’t as slick as the previous theatrical films. And it still doesn’t quite capture the magic of the original short films. But if you like Winnie the Pooh, this should be right up your alley.
Specifications: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Widescreen (1.78:1), enhance for 16x9 televisions. French and Spanish language track; French and Spanish subtitles; English language subtitles for the hearing impaired.
