#21 – Winnie the Pooh (2011)
Best Character: Owl
Worst Character: Rabbit
I love the Winnie the Pooh series. It basically encapsulated my childhood, and I feel guilty for placing the film just outside the top 20 (as high a placement as that actually is). My placement of the original slightly eases my guilt however; I promise you it won’t be making an appearance for a while. Unfortunately the most recent film in the Winnie the Pooh series places here at #21, but that is in no way indicative that this film is bad by any means.
It really is a great throwback to the original. I love that they maintained the interaction between Pooh and the narrator (John Cleese is amazing by the way), and seeing Pooh interact with the environment of the storybook is hilarious. I love the way the film plays on words. Having the letters drop into the hole and allowing the characters to climb up them to escape was a nice touch, and I especially love how the letters used to climb line up to say “And so they all used the letter ladder to climb out of the pit.” The film does a great job at creating little jokes with the audience, most often without the characters realizing it. The song introducing the Backson, for example, ends with the line “we’ll be back soon.” Such are the little things that really make me love this film.
As far as the characters go, let me just preface this by saying that Owl has never been among my favorite characters from the Hundred Acre Woods – that’s how good he is in this one. He went from being my sixth or so favorite character to shooting up to third overall. Owl offers nonstop hilarity and steals every scene he’s in. He is hilariously manipulative, having the ability to convince any of the other characters of just about anything he wants. Some of my favorite Owl scenes include: where he’s writing his memoirs and Pooh and Eeyore think Owl is sneezing every time he says “issue”; again where he’s writing his memoirs and says aloud, “Chapter 1: The Birth of a Genius”; and of course when he’s in the hole with the rest of the characters and neglects to simply fly out. At one point he even flies out of the hole to give Piglet a rousing speech only to then return into the hole without himself or anyone else realizing he left the hole in the first place. All they do is commend him on his brilliant speech. Not to mention without Owl there wouldn’t be any kind of plot or villain at all. Not only does he invent the Backson simply because he can’t read Christopher Robin’s letter, but he’s also the one that takes Eeyore’s tail! If there’s a villain among the characters of the Hundred Acre Woods, it’s gotta be Owl.