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Movie Review: 'The Tigger Movie' Earning his stripes: Pooh's big cat brings charisma to 'The Tigger Movie' Friday, February 11, 2000 By Scott Mervis, Weekend Editor, Post-Gazette
Never has the need for Tigger been bigger than in "The Tigger Movie."
Think about it: Put Winnie the Pooh, Piglet and Eeyore together and you don't have a movie cast, you have a depression clinic. And while Roo might have a little hop, don't look for too much charisma out of scholarly Owl or fuddy-duddy Rabbit either.
So, for the franchise's first leap to the big screen as a feature, they needed a strong, leading man, a star with some serious bounce.
Tigger has that kind of spring in his step, and bounds through his movie, always meaning well, but blissfully unaware, for instance, that he keeps obliterating Eeyore's home.
Of course, even a silly Adam Sandler character is infused with some depth, and so A.A. Milne's tiger is thrust into an existential crisis. The most wonderful thing about Tigger has always been that he's the "onlyiest one." Suddenly, though, he realizes that his friends are a bunch of deadbeats. Piglet's too proper. Eeyore has that passive-aggressive martyr complex. And Pooh just wants to eat.
That sets Tigger off on a quest to find his real family. His concerned friends end up throwing him off the trail with a phony letter, and then must save the day when it sends Tigger bouncing into emotional and physical peril.
With all the hyperkinetic kids fare available these days, Pooh is a welcome throwback to a more classic style of storytelling. The pages of a book are even flipped to narrate the action taking place in the Hundred Acre Wood, and there's a quaint, literary quality to the dialogue that suggests that writer/director Jun Faulkenstein could work on costume dramas. Tigger, in the voice of Pooh veteran Jim Cummings, hilariously tries keeping up with the lofty talk, tossing off gems like, "Where the heck are my mannerisms?"
Obviously, with this release, Disney is trying to move some Pooh product. And it's nice to see Pooh go to the big screen without selling out. The only real concession to the times is a Tigger daydream sequence that quickly references everything from Marilyn Monroe to "Hollywood Squares" to Jerry Springer.
Here's comes the but. With all the hyperkinetic kids fare available these days, Pooh is also a little unexciting by comparison. They've come up with a few so-so original songs and there are plenty of laughs, but, all in all, this looks like any old Pooh video stretched out for an extra 40 minutes.
It's nice little movie, but Pooh and Tigger are no match for Buzz and Woody.
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Rating: G