| Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin | |
| Director: | Karl Geurs |
| Narrator: | David Warner |
| Music: | Carl Johnson |
| Distributor: | Walt Disney Home Video |
| Runtime: | 76 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin is a 1997 American direct-to-video animated musical adventure comedy-drama film co-written, co-produced, and directed by Karl Geurs. The film follows Winnie the Pooh and his friends on a journey to find and rescue their friend Christopher Robin from the skull. Along the way, the group confront their own insecurities throughout the search, facing and conquering them in a series of events where they are forced to act beyond their own known limits, thus discovering their true potential. Unlike the film's predecessors, this film is an entirely original story, not based on any of A. A. Milne's classic stories.
Once upon the last day of a golden summer, Christopher Robin attempts to tell his friend Winnie-the-Pooh some sad news, but Pooh is uninterested and continuously changes the subject until Christopher Robin forgets about it. After spending the day playing, Christopher Robin leaves Pooh with the quote, "You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think," but the drowsy Pooh does not understand the sentiment. Autumn arrives the next morning, and Pooh awakes to find a pot of honey at his doorstep, failing to notice a note attached to it. After eating the pot's contents and smearing the note with honey, Pooh searches for Christopher Robin to ask who the pot was for, but discovers that he is missing. Pooh's friends – Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, and Rabbit – have not seen Christopher Robin either and cannot decipher the note, so they go to Owl for advice. Although he is able to remove some of the honey from the note, Owl misinterprets it as a request for help from Christopher Robin. Further, mispronouncing the word "school" as "skull", he deduces that Christopher Robin has been taken to a distant and dangerous place called "Skull", a cave where the monstrous "Skullasaurus" resides. Owl equips the group with a map and sends them into the "Great Unknown" of the Hundred Acre Wood.
Throughout their journey through the Great Unknown, the group hears strange noises behind them, which they assume is the Skullasaurus. The group slowly begins to realize just how helpless they are without Christopher Robin in the outside world. Piglet, Tigger, and Rabbit respectively come to believe they lack the courage, strength, or intelligence to go on; Piglet is abducted by a swarm of playful butterflies in a tranquil field, leaving him feeling terrified and useless, Tigger falls into a deep gorge and is unable to bounce out to safety, eventually causing the others to dive in with him, and Rabbit continuously makes bad leadership decisions following Owl's inaccurate map. Pooh tries to comfort them each with the advice Christopher Robin had given him, but fails due to his inability to remember exactly what he said. When Rabbit finally breaks down and admits he has no idea where they are going, the group comes to terms with their failure and sulk in a nearby cave. While everyone is asleep, Pooh privately laments on the sorrow he experiences from losing Christopher Robin.
The next morning, the five friends realize they had spent the night in the Skull Cave. The group enters and splits up to find Christopher Robin; when Tigger, Piglet, Rabbit, and Eeyore eventually reunite, they are scared away by Pooh's distorted reflection as he walks towards them from behind a crystal wall, mistaking him for the Skullasaurus. As Pooh winds up stuck in a small crevasse, his friends believe that he has been eaten. They discover the "Eye of the Skull" where Christopher Robin is supposedly trapped, and overcome their fears and doubts to reach it. Observing his friends' teamwork, Pooh excitedly frees himself from the tight gap, only to slip down a long descent and fall into a deep pit that he is unable to escape. While there, he realizes that Christopher Robin is still with him in his heart, even when they are not together, just as Christopher Robin had promised. As Tigger, Piglet, Rabbit, and Eeyore enter the Eye, they are found by Christopher Robin, who has been searching for them as well. He clears up Owl's misunderstanding of the note, explaining that he wanted Pooh to "help [him]self" to the honey pot he gave him and that he was trying to tell Pooh that he was going to school. The roars of the supposed Skullasaurus they have been plagued by were actually the noises of Pooh's stomach growling, and Christopher Robin rescues Pooh from the pit.
The group exits the cave, only to discover that from the outside, it and the other places they have crossed are not nearly as frightening as they appeared to be when Christopher Robin was not with them. That evening after the group returns home, Christopher Robin says he will be returning to school the next day, but Pooh declares that he will always be waiting for him, and the two happily watch the sunset, knowing they will always have each other in the sanctuary of the Hundred Acre Wood.
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes assessed an approval rating of 33% based on 9 reviews and an average score of 4.3/10.[1]
George Blooston of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C grade, calling it "treacly" and criticized its lack of "grown up-wit [and] child psychology" from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.[2] David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews called the film "tedious", and Alex Sandell of Juicy Cerebellum felt that Disney "always sucked with Pooh."[3]
Jane Louise Boursaw of Kaboose praised the film's songwriting and animation.[4] Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film "two thumbs up" on their review show as well.[5]
In a 2023 interview, cartoonist and animation producer ND Stevenson said that the film was existential, stuck with him, and made him think about "things that I wasn't ready to think about yet, or I didn't even really know the ways in which it was going to help me process things and come to terms with things as an adult".[6]
The film was released on VHS in the United States on August 5, 1997.[7] It was later issued on VHS in the United Kingdom on October 13, 1997. The 1997 VHS release has the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection logo, despite being a direct-to-video film.
It was released for the first time on "Special Edition" DVD on April 11, 2006, with digitally remastered picture and sound quality. It includes a featurette "Pooh's Symphony" and the 1968 film, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.[8]
The film, alongside Piglet's Big Movie, was released on Blu-ray for the first time as a Disney Movie Club exclusive on July 17, 2018 to coincide with its belated 20th anniversary and the live-action Christopher Robin film, released over two weeks later.[9]
Elements of the plot – such as the skull, and the mis-read map – were used in the 2001 video game Party Time with Winnie the Pooh and in the 2006 video game Kingdom Hearts II.
The film's plot is based primarily on two A. A. Milne stories from The House at Pooh Corner: "In which Rabbit has a busy day and we learn what Christopher Robin does in the mornings," and "In which Christopher Robin and Pooh come to an Enchanted Place and we leave them there".