Piglet's Big Movie

Two stars. Disappointing.

Take my rating here with a grain of salt, because I'm not the target audience for this film. But that in itself is disappointing, because the original Disney Winnie The Pooh animations are sweet interpretations of A.A. Milne's books, and hold just as much charm for grown-ups as they do for young kids.

Piglet's Big Movie consists of a series of little adventures told in flashback, held together by the main storyline, in which Piglet runs away because he feels that his friends don't really need him. It is clearly designed to drive home a "friends do need each other" message. But much of the beauty of the original Disney treatment lies in its unstructured rambling, and the joy of just "doing nothing" (as Christopher Robin and Pooh discuss at the end). This new film has a purpose. It tries to lead your imagination down a particular path, rather than letting your own mind do the wandering. Having Carly Simon sing a series of bland A-A-B-A songs rather than letting the characters use their own voices for their own little ditties doesn't help, either. And why on earth did they have to stick a music video of one of the songs between the end of animation and the credits? Alex had a good time because he got to see Pooh and the gang having new adventures, but I didn't like it very much.