Given the source material — A.A. Milne’s enduring writing for children — “Winnie the Pooh’’ is naturally geared toward the little ones, with its cuddly characters and pleasingly soft watercolor strokes, but not at the expense of adults’ enjoyment. Quite the contrary: Grown-ups may find themselves even more engaged by it and perhaps even moved to tears.
“Winnie the Pooh’’ is hilariously funny, though; there’s a great goofiness about it, an earnestness to the adventures of Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and pals that results in abject zaniness. Nobody here is nearly as smart or as competent as they pretend to be, but they mean well, and that makes us not just care about them but actively root for them.
At the same time, it offers an irresistibly sweet tug of nostalgia, of childhood memories and simpler times. The live-action opening sequence features stuffed-animal versions of all those beloved characters basking in the peaceful sunlight of a little boy’s bedroom — Christopher Robin’s bedroom, to be exact — reinforcing the fact that these stories spring from a child’s imagination.
That it works so well on both levels at once is a testament to the clarity of vision at work. Directors Stephen Anderson and Don Hall return not only to hand-drawn animation but also to some of the narrative structure of the original “Pooh’’ films. They invite us in by breaking the fourth wall and reminding us that the source material is literary. Characters leap from one page to the next; they frolic atop sentences and find letters tumbling down all around them.
Later, as Owl spins an increasingly frantic tale about a mysterious monster in the woods, his crude chalkboard drawings spring to life in an entirely different kind of animation. The beauty of this aesthetic is that it’s simultaneously elaborate and imperfect. The multicolored chalk lines are a bit messy; you can almost see dust flying off the screen.
