Despite a similar title, “Christopher Robin” is in no way to be confused with “Goodbye Christopher Robin,” last fall’s soberly fact-based drama about the relationship between “Winnie-the-Pooh” author A.A. Milne and his son. (Christopher Robin Milne, as you may remember, was the inspiration for the famous stuffed bear’s human companion, a small British boy called Christopher Robin.)
The title character of Disney’s gently charming new live-action/CGI hybrid, played by an earnest and winsome Ewan McGregor, is a grown-up version of Pooh’s entirely fictional Christopher Robin, now a married father of one who works for a London luggage manufacturer. He’s disaffected, it seems: in his job, in his marriage to Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) and in his relationship with his young daughter Madeline (Bronte Carmichael).
Disaffected, that is, until Pooh shows up in post-World War II London one day, via a Narnia-like portal in the base of a hollow tree, to remind Christopher about Just What Really Matters in Life. (Purists may be mildly irked to learn that “Robin” has somehow become Christopher’s last name, rather than his middle name. But that’s Disney for you. In terms of source material, “Christopher Robin” at times shows more respect for the movie studio’s own zealously guarded franchise, going back to the 1966 short “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree,” than to Milne’s books of the 1920s.)
But no matter.
“Christopher Robin” is still a sweetly good-natured fable, with winning voice performances by Disney veteran Jim Cummings in the dual roles of Pooh and Tigger, and especially by Brad Garrett as the perpetually gloomy Eeyore (a role that seems made for him).