Robert Buscemi

My favorite Pooh movies are the ones that actually adapt sections of A. A. Milne's original book, but this one is actually pretty darn good despite being a mostly original work. It has a nice lesson about prejudice, xenophobia, and preconceptions, and Lumpy (a/k/a Heffridge Trumpler Brompet Heffalump IV) is a delightful addition to the canon. Pooh's barely in it, since it is really a Roo movie, but when he does show up he's adorable in his little aviator's cap. The film is a good follow-up to the terrific Piglet's Big Movie, with the same screenwriter and more catchy songs by Carly Simon.

This fourth adaptation I own is part of Tokyopop's Cine-Manga line of graphic novels. They literally take stills from the actual movie and cut-and-paste them into a comic book layout with dialogue adapted from the original screenplay. I tried playing the movie and reading along, and while I was able to find the exact images they had used from the film, I was surprised at how much they edited the script: rewording character lines and chronologically readjusting the order of images and words. They also used some Winnie the Pooh stock art to make him a visible narrator of the book.

If you like to do voices for the characters, it's a fun and challenging read-aloud experience since it is purely dialogue and requires rapid-fire voice adjustments.

The book is an enjoyable adaptation of the film, but I mostly like it for giving me a chance to give my then four-year-old daughter a comic book featuring a character we both love. I could begin indoctrination into both the graphic novel and Winnie the Pooh cults!

FOR REFERENCE:

Pooh's Heffalump Movie was directed by Frank Nissen from a screenplay by Brian Hohlfeld and Evan Spiliotopoulos, based on the characters created by by A. A. Milne.

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... )… (mer)