The Magical World Of Disney #349: Top 100 Disney Movies, Part 19

64. Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009)

Disney’s A Christmas Carol is a 2009 American 3D computer animated motion-capture holiday fantasy comedy-drama film written and directed by Robert Zemeckis. It is an adaptation of the Charles Dickens story of the same name and stars Jim Carrey in a multitude of roles, including Ebenezer Scrooge as a young, middle-aged, and old man, and the three ghosts who haunt Scrooge. The film also features supporting roles done by Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn, and Cary Elwes.

The 3D film was produced through the process of motion capture, a technique Zemeckis previously used in his films The Polar Express (2004), and Beowulf (2007).

The film was released in Disney Digital 3-D and IMAX 3-D. It is also Disney’s third film retelling of A Christmas Carol following 1983’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol and 1992’s The Muppet Christmas Carol. The film also marks Carrey’s first role in a Walt Disney Pictures film, and his second Christmas film after How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000).

Well, there’s not much to say plot-wise because it’s the same basic story of A Christmas Carol but instead of following the previous adaptations in the last 30 years, this follows Charles Dickens’ original story, which surprised me when I heard that it was actually written as kind of a horror story, which is what you need to know going into this film.

The basic story is that Ebenezer Scrooge (in one of four roles played by Jim Carrey), an old grouch, gets visited by three ghosts on the night of Christmas Eve to get his life right. A Christmas Carol is my all-time favorite story because it’s set up really well and it has a very important lesson to teach, “Don’t be a jerk your whole life because nothing good will come out of it.”

And of all the adaptations I’ve seen, and I love almost all of them, this is probably one of the strongest ones.

At the same time, it’s the creepiest one I’ve ever seen. The whole movie isn’t like that but there are points that won’t exactly have you jumping out of your seat screaming but it will creep you out.

Despite all that, there’s SO much to love in this movie.

Robert Zemeckis, one of my all-time favorite directors, does a good directing job and he did a very good job with the script too.

Jim Carrey is really good as Scrooge and the three ghosts. The rest of the cast is really good, Gary Oldman is always guaranteed to deliver somewhat of a great performance, regardless if he’s playing it straight or over the top, Bob Hoskins is good here, Colin Firth is decent, and the rest of the cast is pretty good.

The motion capture is fantastic and is a strong improvement over the last movie, Beowulf. Since the release of this film, motion capture animation by Zemeckis has been pretty much obliterated, thanks to the disaster of Mars Needs Moms but for the time, it was a good concept but it just never grew into anything spectacular.

The biggest argument about motion capture animation was that if the whole purpose is to give an animated character a performance of a real live actor, then why not just do this with real life actors? Hell, you can still have Carrey as Scrooge and the three ghosts and still make it a live-action film. It’s not that hard to do. I just saw Night At The Museum 3 where Ben Stiller not only plays Larry Daley but also the caveman who thinks he’s his father. But hey, I’m glad to see Zemeckis returning to live-action form with Flight and the forthcoming The Walk.

The story is fairly well done, you have a story that follows Dickens’ original concept for the story, which was suppose to be his ghost story, something you rarely see in adaptations like this. Like I said, the creepy elements can be really creepy such as the departure of the Ghost Of Christmas Present, which is suppose to be this whimsical moment but they turn it into this really creepy moment that seems so out of place and of course, the stuff with the Ghost Of Christmas Future like the shadow turning into the demon horse which is not something you’d expect to see in a Disney version of this. Maybe in the more adult versions of the story but for Disney? I know Disney likes to go dark at some points but that’s going a little too far.

While I don’t think this is the single greatest adaptation of the story, I know Scrooged and Mickey’s Christmas Carol are better retellings of the story, this is still a fantastic movie, it’s one of the strongest adaptations of my favorite story, the performances are great, the visuals are nicely done, the animation is great, and the story recaptures Dickens’ original version of the story. It’s a good adaptation of the tale.

63. Christopher Robin (2018)

An adult Christopher Robin (Ewan MacGregor), who is now focused on his new life, work, and family, suddenly meets his old friend Winnie the Pooh, who returns to his unforgotten childhood past to help him return to the Hundred Acre Wood and help find Pooh’s lost friends.

Before we get into the actual review, I did have something I wanted to bring up about this particular movie, something weird that happened that I wouldn’t expect Disney to do.

I don’t know why but for some reason, Disney was so hesitant to actually get reviews for this out so much so that they waited until Thursday night at 5pm eastern standard time to drop their review embargo and at this point, the movie is already doing early Thursday night screenings where people are already heading into those screenings not knowing if the movie was any good or not. And to me, that felt weird that Disney would be so late in letting reviews come out on this like they were ashamed of this.

The studio that was alright with reviews going out days in advance for films like The Lone Ranger, Mars Needs Moms, John Carter, Tomorrowland, The Good Dinosaur, Alice Through The Looking Glass, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and A Wrinkle In Time, some of their more notable bombs in the last few years, decided now was the time to push back on Christopher Robin? Really?

It was just so weird to see this because they’ve been promoting this movie like crazy since March, the trailers have been really good, the marketing has been solid, people love Winnie The Pooh, it’s a $6 billion franchise for Disney….and yet, they are waiting until the movie came out for the public before they put the reviews out. What sense does that make? This is just such an odd decision from a studio like Disney who is smart enough to sell their brand and yet who has made some of the strangest decisions in the last few weeks, not putting out the new Nutcracker & The Four Realms trailer that debuted in front of Ant-Man & The Wasp online (even as of today, it’s still not up), the James Gunn firing for tweets that Disney already knew about when they hired him in 2012 still baffles me and I think this comes just as close in terms of oddness.

And all this happened for naught especially when you consider that the actual movie itself was actually really good.

Yeah, the movie actually lived up to all the marketing and played very well on why we love hanging out with these characters, this is a really good movie.

I’ve said in the past that there has never been a really bad Winnie The Pooh movie, there’s never been that bad Pooh movie that I went “wow, you guys really made something terrible,” there has been a couple of films that weren’t as strong as some of the best stuff. For the great films like Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, Pooh’s Grand Adventure, Winnie The Pooh, The Tigger Movie, you also have those films like Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, Piglet’s Big Movie, the direct-to-video Pooh movies that aren’t as great but are still enjoyable, they’re still worth watching. I would probably put Christopher Robin somewhere right in the middle, there’s great stuff all around here but there are those moments that puts this into the lesser Pooh movies.

On the positives, I really like the casting in this, Ewan MacGregor as the older Christopher Robin is very solid in this, he gives a really good performance and he’s given a lot to do to work with these characters that aren’t really there and he does a good job creating some solid moments with them. Hayley Atwell playing his wife is very good in this, although she’s not really given a whole lot to do except to be kind of the human voice of reason for Robin. Bronte Carmichael as Madeline is really solid in this, she has a nice daughter-father chemistry with MacGregor in the scenes they share together.

The voice work is pitch perfect, Jim Cummings is always going to be terrific as Winnie The Pooh and Tigger and here, he does not disappoint, he’s terrific as Tigger but he’s great as Pooh, Brad Garrett had some of the funnier lines in the film as Eeyore, Nick Mohammed as Piglet is good although he’s kind of pushed off to the side here as are the rest of the characters like Peter Capaldi’s Rabbit, Sophie Okonedo’s Kanga, and Toby Jones’ Owl, all who are fine when they are on screen but don’t really have a whole lot to do in this movie.

The script, despite obviously having a lot taken from films like Hook and Elf, is overall well written and does a good job of making itself aware of some of the potential plotholes they could have, like how Pooh is able to get to London through a tree in the Hundred Acre Wood and I also liked that they didn’t do the typical fish out of water jokes and clichés with these characters, they didn’t dumb down these characters more than they already were.

The cinematography is beautiful, Matthias Koenigswieser does a great job of showcasing these beautiful setpieces the movie has to offer, the visual effects are overall impressively done, I loved the character blending they did for the Pooh characters combining the Disney Pooh designs with the A.A. Milne Pooh designs, and the music was really solid all around, right down to having Richard M. Sherman, of the Sherman Brothers who also wrote songs for Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, and the original Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh among other things, coming back to write some of the new songs in the film and have a cameo in the post credits scene.

The little touches they also throw in here are nicely done like how both Pooh and Christopher Robin seem to drift more and more apart, the Hundred Acre Wood becomes more of a dreary dreary place and there’s also many homages to the Winnie The Pooh brand throughout the film such as the score incorporating the Winnie The Pooh theme song within itself, I like little touches like that.

There’s even some pretty heavy moments, it was interesting and cool to see Christopher Robin actually in the war in the opening bit of the movie. Then, you have these moments where Robin’s patience is tested too far and he has to snap at Pooh, there’s a part where they are in the Hundred Acre Wood trying to find Pooh’s friends and they get lost and Christopher snaps at Pooh and it’s a rough scene to watch mostly because you don’t expect to see Christopher Robin get this upset at Pooh but it’s just enough where you feel the impact and you never get that sense that he’s gone too far, I was waiting for that moment to push past an uncomfortable point but thankfully it didn’t, it’s just enough to feel the overall impact. You can even feel the turmoil between Robin and his family, there’s never a point where you don’t get the sense that Robin loves his family more than his work up until the very end, he doesn’t even kiss his wife or daughter at any point in the opening scenes.

There are indeed some negative aspects to bring up, one is the lack of utilizing all the Pooh characters equally, like I said, most of the film is centered around Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and Tigger while Rabbit, Kanga, and Roo are just kind of left in the background without much to do. Also, some of the characters are obvious cardboard cutouts like Christopher Robin’s boss is your typical sleazy slimy asshole and Robin’s neighbor…who has a subplot that is never fully realized…is your typical clingy, sometimes creepy, neighbor character.

My biggest overall thing that knocks this down a peg and also ended up bumping my rating down a bit was the realization at the end of how Robin can fix this problem he has. The main problem Robin has, besides Pooh coming back into his life, is that he has to decrease expenditures by 20%, largely by choosing which employees to lay off, and to present the necessary paperwork on Monday.

So, they get to the climax, Madeline and Pooh arrive near the Winslow building, but the paperwork Robin had is blown away by the wind before they are reunited with Christopher’s group. Christopher comforts his daughter and assures her of her importance to him and that she doesn’t need to go to boarding school.

Christopher improvises a new plan involving reducing the prices of luggage, giving employees paid leave, and selling their luggage to everyday people to increase demand, instead of laying off employees. Winslow Jr. dismisses the idea, but his father Winslow Sr. warms up to it. Christopher points out Winslow Jr. hasn’t been doing his part in helping with the plan, having been golfing all weekend, and Winslow Jr. is humiliated. Winslow Sr. agrees to the plan, and Christopher decides to spend time off with his family

So, their plan to fix the company is to reduce the price of luggage, give employees paid time off, and sell their luggage to everyday people?

WASN’T THAT WHAT THEY WERE DOING ALL ALONG????

What else would be using that luggage for? Does regular luggage just not exist in this world before? And also ‘sell their luggage to everyday people’, again, weren’t they doing that already? Are you telling me that they’ve been specifically keeping luggage away from regular people because they’re not rich enough? How was this company making a profit to begin with then?

I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever, we’ve seen some pretty stupid endings this summer, the little girl being told she was a clone on a throwaway line from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the Macarena being the song that defeats the bad guy in Hotel Transylvania 3, but this is by far the absolutely most stupidest resolution I’ve seen in a movie this summer, in a long time, I know that we’re playing with the rules of reality here but Disney is pushing its’ luck here.

Aside from the ending, Disney’s Christopher Robin is an overall really solid film, it’s not up to the levels of the Paddington movies by any means but it’s still a really solid movie almost all around, if the ending had been better handled, we would’ve had something on the levels of Paddington 2 but as it stands, it works enough on its’ own to make it another, for the most part, winner for Disney. If you love these characters, you’ll definitely enjoy this, but if you don’t have that big of an affection for it, it’s still okay but it’s not gonna turn you over to the series.

Overall, Christopher Robin is an overall great movie that deserves to be watched but don’t go in expecting to see something on the levels of Paddington.

#100 & #99

#98 & #97

#96 & #95

#94 & #93

#92 & #91

#90 & #89

#88 & #87

#86 & #85

#84 & #83

#82 & #81

#80 & #79

#78 & #77

#76 & #75

#74 & #73

#72 & #71

#70 & #69

#68 & #67

#66 & #65

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