The challenge with Winnie the Pooh-type whimsy is that if you don’t calibrate the tone just right, it can be an unbearable slog, tedious and treacly and dopey. Perhaps I’m being a curmudgeon or wasn’t in the right headspace, but that’s how I felt about “A Very Merry Pooh Year.”
The hourlong special is broken into two half-hour shorts, one Christmas-themed and one New Years-themed. The former was tough for me to get through, with Pooh bumbling through sending a letter to Santa and delivering half-assed presents to his friends in Santa’s stead. The second story was a slight improvement, with some funny bits of characters impersonating other characters.
On the plus side, the animation and the voice-work are passable for a TV special, and there are occasional flourishes that made me smile. (Jim Cummings as Tigger mispronouncing New Years resolutions as “restitutions” with a thick, spitty enunciation made me chuckle every time.)
But, overall, “A Very Merry Pooh Year” didn’t do it for me.
Is It Good?
Not Good (2/8)
Note: This review was published early in The Goods' history and is a candidate for an expanded review in the future. Please excuse brevity or inconsistencies in style.
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.
2 replies on “Winnie the Pooh: A Very Merry Pooh Year (2002)”
OK, so you’ve seen more of the real ephemera than I realized. I think I accidentally and even improbably watched the good ones. Maybe (I recall you said this) they put actual effort into the feature-length ones.
Yeah I think the feature theory makes sense, also watching this brand of children’s entertainment at least somewhat against your will is not the ideal way to encounter 100AW, so I was maybe sourer than I needed to be. But it does make me curious about the ones you were more fond of.