tek's rating:

The Tigger Movie (G)
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This came out in 2000, but I didn't see it until 2013. In the intervening years, there have been a few other movies based on characters from the "Winnie the Pooh" books, none of which I've seen yet. Before this movie, the last time Disney released a "Winnie the Pooh" theatrical movie was 1977, and that was just a collection of older animated shorts. I think the only voice actor who was the same here as in the older movie was Piglet's actor (John Fiedler), but most of the characters pretty much sounded like their old selves, anyway. And the characterizations were written pretty much the way I'd expect the characters to be written. So... if you're a fan of Disney's classic interpretation of the series, this should all feel reasonably familiar. I will say that for awhile, I was thinking I'd probably rate the movie "meh," but as it wore on, I increased my estimation gradually to "meh and a half," "meh and three quarters," and finally to one smiley ("kinda liked"). It's not something I feel the need to ever see again, but I thought it was okay. But I wouldn't be shocked by old fans rating it either lower than "meh" or much higher than "kinda liked." (It's hard for me to imagine anyone watching it who wasn't already a fan of the old movie.)

Anyway, I don't think I should bother to explain the setting or who (or what) any of the characters are. You should already know. So I'll just say it's basically about Tigger (here voiced by Jim Cummings) becoming depressed that he's the only Tigger in the world. (This is actually a neat concept for a film; I've always loved the song where he declares the most wonderful thing about Tiggers being that he's the only one, but it makes sense to turn that idea around.) Meanwhile, Roo wishes Tigger was his big brother, and is troubled to see Tigger sad. So he helps him look for his family (of whom Tigger himself has no knowledge). And later, he suggests Tigger write his family a letter. Which doesn't really make sense, except that he just lets the wind take the letter away, rather than mailing it in a realistic way. I guess that makes sense, if you don't know an address, or anything. Later, Roo and all Tigger's other friends write a letter in reply, pretending to be Tigger's family. But then Tigger gets the idea that his family will be coming to visit him. There are other subplots, like Eeyore's (Peter Cullen) house getting destroyed, and everyone (except Rabbit) neglecting their preparations for the impending Winter, in order to deal with Tigger's existential crisis, or whatever. And all the subplots tie into the main plot.

And I don't really want to say anything else about the plot itself. Some of it felt kind of boring and old hat, to me, without the whimsy of the original. Some of it was just ridicarus. Some of it was funny, and some of it depressing, and some of it heartwarming. Of course the end was totally heartwarming. And the songs were all reasonably fun, I guess. (One of the songs had visuals that were like crazy-trippy, full of very un-Pooh-like pop culture references.) And there was a fairly awesome bounce that Tigger taught Roo. All in all, not a bad movie at all. I feel kind of bad about not liking it more than I did, but at least I liked it more than I expected to.


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The Many Adventures... * The Tigger Movie * Piglet's Big Movie * Pooh's Heffalump Movie * Winnie the Pooh * Christopher Robin