Winnie the Pooh: Movie Review

9:00 PM PDT 3/31/2011 by Todd McCarthy

Preschoolers will enjoy the animated feature, featuring the voices of Jim Cummings, Craig Ferguson, John Cleese and Tom Kenny and songs sung by Zooey Deschanel, while parents will appreciate the 69-minute running time, writes Todd McCarthy.

Disney refurbishes a franchise that's been one of its reliable little goldmines for half a century with Winnie the Pooh. A seamless narrative rather than a collection of segments in the manner of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1977, this gentle, lovingly wrought, for-tots-and-parents-only resuscitation of A.A. Milne's characters may have unintentionally set a Hollywood record of sorts: It's 69 minutes long, including 10 devoted to the credits, meaning that 14.5 per cent of the running time details who worked on the film, including production babies (arguable feature length for the program is reached by tacking on a six-minute opening cartoon, The Ballad of Nessie, about the Loch Ness monster's self-created lake of tears).