The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

"Isn't this a clever disguise?

"What are you supposed to be?"

"I'm a little, black rain cloud, of course."

The narrator (Cabot) reads, and interacts with the characters, some stories about Winnie the Pooh (Holloway), a bear of very little brains.

This could be the room of any small boy, but it just happens to belong to a boy named Christopher Robin. Like most small boys, Christopher Robin has toy animals to play with, and they all live together in a wonderful world of make-believe. But his best friend is a bear called Winnie the Pooh, or Pooh, for short. Now, Pooh had some very unusual adventures, and they all happened right here in the Hundred-Acre Wood. 

Pooh loves honey, but when it's time to eat he doesn't have any.  What's a bear to do?  His friends Christopher Robin (Reitherman, Walmsley, Turner), timid Piglet (Fiedler), gloomy Eeyore (Wright), talkative Owl (Smith), enthusiastic Tigger (Winchell), bossy Rabbit (Matthews), Gopher (Morris), Kanga (Luddy) and Roo (Howard, Whitaker) are ready to go on adventures.  Can they save Pooh's honey from a blustery day, a flood, and Heffalumps and Woozles?


I grew up loving this film.  And that love has not diminished seeing the film again as an adult.  Winnie the Pooh reminds me of my childhood and has a special innocence that most children's movies don't seem to have anymore.

The film is based on A.A. Milne's "Winnie-the-Pooh" children's stories, which were based on his son Christopher Robin's stuffed animals.  Originally Disney conceived 3 short films featuring the characters: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974), which each featured original music by Richard Sherman and Robert Sherman.  In 1977 they combined all three shorts into a feature film.  In 1983 Disney created another short film Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore (which is a bonus feature on the DVD for this film).

The film is cute, using the book as a narrative device.  The characters interact with the narrator, the words on the page, and the pages themselves.  It is a fun method that works well to link the stories together.  The characters are fun and voiced by talented character actors (I still associate John Fiedler as Piglet... even when I see him other films I say "that's Piglet!").  The songs are memorable, especially the opening "Winnie the Pooh Theme" (yes, it will be stuck in your head afterwards) and "The Tigger Song."

A timeless children's classic!

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) 74 minutes
Director: John Lounsbery & Wolfgang Reitherman
Starring: Sterling Holloway as Winnie the Pooh
Sebastian Cabot as The Narrator
Junius Matthews as Rabbit
Barbara Luddy as Kanga
Howard Morris as Gopher
John Fiedler as Piglet
Ralph Wright as Eeyore
Hal Smith as Owl
Paul Winchell as Tigger
Clint Howard & Dori Whitaker as Roo
Bruce Reitherman & Jon Walmsley & Timothy Turner as Christopher Robin