The Tigger Movie Review
by Eugene Novikov (lordeugene_98 AT yahoo DOT com)February 26th, 2000
The Tigger Movie (2000)
Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Featuring the voice talents of Jim Cummings, Nikita Hopkins, Ken Sansom, John Fiedler, Peter Cullen. Directed by Jun Falkenstein. Rated G.
You would expect the first theatrical feature based on the popular A. A. Milne Winnie the Pooh tales to be something memorable, children's entertainment for the ages. You'd think so, wouldn't you? Well, Disney never ceases to surprise us. This release seems purely perfunctory, made for a quick buck with no heart or much effort poured into it. It doesn't even star everybody's favorite bear (assuming you don't like Yogi). The Tigger Movie is pretty run-of-the-mill stuff; the youngest set of kids might enjoy it, but I doubt they'll want to watch it again or even remember it after a couple of days. Call me a Disney purist, but when it comes to their animation department, I expect the best and am rather irritated when I don't get it.
Pooh has crushingly little screen time because, as one might glean from the title, the focus of the film is Tigger, that lovable, striped companion. Unable to find anyone to "bounce" with him one afternoon, Tigger realizes that he might have a family somewhere and goes off searching for it. He looks for a family tree -- literally a tree, because he doesn't know any better. He's inevitably disappointed because even with the help of his moderately bouncy young kangaroo companion Roo, the search comes up empty.
Seeing their pal's disappointment, Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit and Iore plot to write a phony letter from his family and then have a phony family (them dressed in Tigger costumes) show up at Tigger's door. The final message, of course, is that friends are your family too and, as might be expected from a movie whose target audience's age is in the single digits, it is delivered with little subtlety. I'm perfectly fine with this as long as there is a certain grace and joie de vivre to the film. That's where this Tigger comes up short.
The animation is old-school and that's the way it's supposed to be. It has that very Pooh-ish storybook quality that fits the franchise like a glove; it's Disney's one cash cow that has refused to be taken over by high-tech gimmickery. What doesn't work is, well, everything else. Tigger's a pretty good character, but his babbling, word-butchering schtick gets old pretty fast. That's usually where the supporting players come to the rescue but The Tigger Movie doesn't let them be themselves. Winnie himself shows up only a couple of times so that he can do his trademark climbing-a-tree-after-honey-only-to-be-attacked-by- a-swarm-of-bees. Iore's presence, too, is merely for the sake of him being there. Piglet barely even opens his mouth. The Disney movie mill has stripped these beloved, age-old characters of almost all personality for the sake of commercialization and also to fit everyone into an 80-minute movie while focusing primarily on Tigger. The Winnie the Pooh series was so enduring because the characters worked together to solve a problem; this really is Tigger's movie.
I, of course, am not the target audience for this film so I am hard- pressed to say whether you should take your children to see this movie or not. The youngest set will almost certainly enjoy it. But when it comes to continuing the Pooh saga with grace and dignity, The Tigger Movie doesn't get the job done. It's passable, but I apparently wanted more than Disney could provide with a film that isn't their annual "animated feature."
Grade: C
©2000 Eugene Novikov
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