Winnie The Pooh and the disappearing human touch

MANILA, Philippines - I wonder if this new generation of kids find themselves disoriented when they come across traditional 2D hand-drawn animation in a movie theater. It’s not entirely alien to them, I’m sure, but most of the time they see it on television, either as anime or on one of the cartoon channels, a mishmash of old and new Saturday morning cartoons. In terms of movies, be they Pixar or Dreamworks or what have you, basically every animated film is CG. And I’m not knocking that: Pixar has always held fast to good stories and good storytelling, and it’s their success that’s inspired the other studios to follow in their wake.

But the new Winnie the Pooh from Disney had me pining for more hand-drawn animation. There’s a warmth and softness that isn’t always present in the occasionally too-glossy surfaces and sheen of computer-generated graphics. There’s a grace to the movement that isn’t always motion-captured, and so lends itself well to exaggeration for “cartoonish” effect (no getting around that pun). There is a quality to the hand-drawn line that is, dare I say, human, and thus flawed, that actually gives it a charm and character that is palpable. There is of course, bad line animation just as there is bad CG, whether it’s from laziness or a crazy schedule (usually both). But when done as prettily as it is in Winnie the Pooh, it sings.

The new Pooh film basically concerns the gang trying to find Eeyore a new tail, as his usual one is missing. In the course of this search, Christopher Robin disappears, apparently the kidnap victim of some gruesome creature known as a Baxon. It’s a short, sweet tale, very much a kids’ story, but with enough humor and wordplay to charm adults. The wordplay can be literal, as the characters interact with the words of the storybook floating in the air, or pulled down and scattered to the ground as the case may be. Being old enough to remember the earlier Pooh cartoons, there are some changes that jump out: Christopher Robin seems younger, and Tigger’s voice seems lower, reminding me of the late comedian George Carlin. Craig Ferguson is a welcome voice as Owl; he gets to deliver many of the best lines in the movie, just like he did in How To Train Your Dragon.

You can see how the simpler, brightly-colored characters “pop” from the more detailed backgrounds.

What is striking is just how lovely everything looks. The backgrounds in particular are lush, dense and soft at the same time, capturing that storybook quality perfectly. The characters themselves are simpler and more solid in color, which makes them “pop” for better effect. The songs and music hearken back to the classic pop melodies, with indie darling Zooey Deschanel performing three of them (She & Him contribute one original song for the film’s end credits).

The funny thing is that Pixar, which spearheaded the CG animation phenomenon, is responsible for this return to tradition. Disney had announced that 2004’s Home on the Range would be its last traditionally-animated film, but when they acquired Pixar and made John Lasseter and Ed Catmull the heads of Animation, they reversed that decision, pushing projects like The Princess and the Frog and this one. It’s encouraging that the guys at the forefront of animation’s future still revere and value the style and animation that made them animators in the first place.

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Winnie The Pooh is an Ayala Cinemas exclusive now showing at Greenbelt 3 and Glorietta.