Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: Buena Vista Distribution
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
The film opens in Christopher Robin's bedroom, where the camera moves into a storybook. In the Hundred Acre Wood, Winnie the Pooh, "a bear of very little brain", wakes up, does his "stoutness exercises" and finds his honey pot empty. He hears bees buzzing at the top of a tall tree, climbs it, falls through the branches into a gorse bush and tries again with a blue balloon, rolling himself in mud to disguise himself as a little black rain cloud. The bees see through it. Then Pooh visits Rabbit, who reluctantly gives him lunch, and Pooh eats so much honey that he gets stuck in Rabbit's front door on the way out. Christopher Robin, Owl and the others can't pull him free; he must wait until he gets thinner. Rabbit hangs washing on Pooh's rear end and decorates it as a hunting trophy. Days later Pooh finally shrinks enough, and the whole crowd pulls, and he shoots out like a cork into a hollow tree, which happens to be full of honey. Pooh is perfectly content to stay there.
Why It Matters
- The film's charm is in its gentle, storybook framing: the camera moves through the pages of the book, the narrator talks to the characters, and Pooh even walks across the printed text. Sterling Holloway's sleepy, sweet Pooh and the Sherman brothers' songs made the characters instantly familiar.
- It was the first Disney Winnie the Pooh film and the beginning of one of the company's most lucrative franchises. Combined with two later featurettes into The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), it introduced Milne's characters, in Disney's designs, to generations of children around the world.
Notes and Trivia
- It was released as a supporting featurette alongside the live-action Disney comedy The Ugly Dachshund.
- Gopher, who "isn't in the book", is a character invented by Disney for the film.
- Christopher Robin is voiced by Bruce Reitherman, the director's son.
- See also: One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).