Christopher Robin

Marc Forster gave his animation team an odd rule: the toys get no elbows and no knees. Pooh bends the way a stuffed body bends, so the film can barely use physical comedy and loads the feeling onto head angles instead. Pooh does not blink, and his brow and mouth barely move. Eeyore’s first pass read as dead rather than sad, so the animators lifted his head. Real plush toys were on set. The actors handled them during the take, and the animators worked from that footage and from recordings of their own play sessions with the same toys. Matthias Koenigswieser shot on film rather than digitally, reserving 65mm for the entry into the Hundred Acre Wood and the Pooh Sticks bridge, taking the rest on 35mm, and lighting almost every scene with available light plus Ultra Contrast filtration. The forest is Ashdown Forest and Pippingford Park, the woods that fed the original books. Jim Cummings voices both Pooh and Tigger. The film was nominated for the visual effects Oscar and lost to First Man. A good fit if you can accept that the largest set piece is a bear sitting still, and you want the woods dim rather than bright. Not for anyone expecting Tigger’s bouncing to carry the comedy, because these toys were built not to stretch.