Christopher Robin: Melancholy and the infinite childhood

I’LL admit it, Christopher Robin made me cry. It made me bawl ugly tears. The kind of tears I anticipated when I chose an empty row in the cinema, the better to hide my shame.

Last year’s Goodbye Christopher Robin — a totally different movie from a different studio — also made me cry. Paddington 2 made me cry.

Maybe there’s something about toy bears. Or maybe it’s because filmmakers know adults are looking for an emotional catharsis, a guilt-free weep session that we’re too busy to indulge in elsewhere.

And this is exactly what Christopher Robin was going for — to tap, shamelessly, into that mourning for the so-called simpler times of our childhoods.

It brought out every weapon in its arsenal to emotionally manipulate the viewer — a sepia-toned montage of a boy growing up, leaving behind his toys and carefree spirit to become a company automaton, layered with a classic piano score and pencilled animation.

So you weep, but you’re also fully aware at the cheap, almost cynical tricks it took to get you there — and that kind of stings. It’s a heavy-handed, unsatisfying experience.

Disney’s Christopher Robin live-action movie, starring Ewan McGregor and Hayley Atwell, is a lacklustre movie, more concerned with melancholy than storytelling. It tries so hard to evoke a feeling that it resorts to inelegant, saccharine methods to cheat its way there, rather than thoughtfully building it through story and character.

In the film, after its cloying opening sequence with the aforementioned crying, Christopher Robin (McGregor) is now a grown-up, married to Evelyn (Atwell) and father to the clever Madeline (Bronte Carmichael).

Christopher Robin works as an “efficiency expert” at a luggage company, constantly missing dinners at home and weekends with his family. The message, obviously, is he’s so wrapped up in work and stressed out that he’s forgotten how to be cheerful.

When his wife and daughter go away for the weekend to his childhood cottage at the edge of Hundred Acre Wood and Christopher Robin stays in London to work, his childhood friend comes to find him instead.

Pooh, through some kind of magical process, finds himself in the square opposite Christopher Robin’s city home. Christopher Robin eventually returns to his haunt and Pooh’s particular brand of wisdom — “Doing nothing often leads to the best something”, where he’ll hopefully find his spirit again.

This version of Pooh is so bizarrely wistful, his dejection almost matches Eeyore’s moroseness. Christopher Robin’s Pooh, Eeyore and co are how an adult would see them, not a child. Which makes them not the childhood favourites you’ll remember, rather ones that you might resent for reminding you how old you are.

Which leads to the question of just who is this movie for? If it’s for kids, it’s far too grim and introspective for them — except for the more “adventure-y” last 30 minutes.

But if this movie is aimed at adults, it’s beating its message with too big a stick. We get it — we should work less, be less stressed, stop to smell the wood moss, remember what it was like to be kid yada yada yada. It’s just so heavy with melancholy it threatens to crush you.

Just because it can elicit cheap tears doesn’t mean it’s actually emotionally effective.

Rating: ★★½

Christopher Robin is in cinemas from Thursday, September 12.

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