Winnie the Pooh (2011)

[American_dog_2008]

Well, back to topic?

Will Winnie the Pooh be a Blockbuster or lackluster this summer?

[Dusterian]

Only one of the songs from Tangled sucked. That was "I've Got a Dream", and it wasn't really that bad.

Meanwhile, I think all the songs from TPaTF pretty much sucked, and weren't very memorable.

However, if you think they didn't suck, or were memorable, fine, but I couldn't remember them. And I can't remember "I've Got a Dream" either, but I remember all the others. Most people agree Alan Menken's work still was a better choice and turned out better as proven by Tangled.

[Dacey]

"I've Got a Dream" sucked? That was one of my favorite parts of the whole movie!

[Whippet Angel]

I'm actually with Dust on this one. I wasn't crazy about the song and I found that scene to be just over-the-top silly. It wasn't terrible though.

[Bill1978]

I've Got A Dream is a good fun sequence in the movie, but outside of movie the song isn't really anything spectacular. Kinda how I feel about the songs from Princess & The Frog. Within the movie they are great and work well, but outside of the movie they are meh and don't work very well without the visuals.

I'm throwing a vote that Winnie-The-Pooh will be a Lackluster this US Summer. But I hope to be surprised if that means mroe traditional animation. Maybe it will encourage them to re-greenlight Snow Queen and I can get what I really long for a hand drawn animated Alan Menken musical.

[EricJ]

There's RUMORS-mind-you that there may have been "Enchanted cures everything" talk at the studio of cutting their losses and doing Snow Queen as a live-action musical for Kevin Lima to direct--
But it's only studio animator-scuttlebutt, and subject to change on the fortunes of the next movie they hand to Lima's free-ride-ticket to rescue.
(Some of us don't forget "102 Dalmatians"...)

[chernabog]

The only song I remember from Tangled was "When Will My Life Begin", everything else just felt pretty weak. The score was a lot better than TPATF, but I definitely perfer the latter's songs - to me they were far better infused into the progression of the story whereas Tangled just kind of shoehorned them in.

Not really sure what to expect from Winnie The Pooh. Part of me still hopes that pitting it against Harry Potter is such a crazy move that it will somehow work. But realistically it's probably gonna fail. I'm still not sure why the US are getting it in Summer, when we (UK) are getting it in April.

[estefan]

But it's only studio animator-scuttlebutt, and subject to change on the fortunes of the next movie they hand to Lima's free-ride-ticket to rescue.
(Some of us don't forget "102 Dalmatians"...)

It was actually recently announced that Kevin Lima is developing a project at Sony Animation.

And I think all of us want to forget 102 Dalmatians. But, come on, not even Steven Spielberg could have directed a decent film out of that dreadful screenplay.

Back on topic, even if Winnie the Pooh doesn't do well, it will recoup its budget at least, as they've smartly given it a $35 million price tag. And at the very least, Mort will be hand-drawn (I'm still not sure if King of the Elves has been resurrected as CGI or not as I keep reading conflicting reports).

[chernabog]

I think King of the Elves will be CG and I'm basing this purely on the fact that Dean Wellins (if he is still the director, seems to keep changing!) said Tick Tock Tale was a trial run for his next full length feature would be in 3D.

But yeah, the quaintness of Winnie the Pooh and the small budget means that it'll both make a profit and won't be judged too harshly in comparison with other Summer flicks.

[Hewylewis]

I'd rather have it be 2D, Disney really needs to make more 2D films after Pooh.

[Dusterian]

The reason Princess didn't make as much money is the very same reason Winnie won't either - no one wants 2D animation. As much as Lasseter would like to make us believe otherwise, one need only look at the success of films such as Ice Age 3 and Despicable Me to see that people are far more attracted to pretty visuals over story.

I just wanted to say that actually I find 2D animation to, generally, always have prettier visuals than 3D films. Imagining Tangled in 2D makes it instantly prettier to me. Winnie the Pooh is definately prettier in it's colorful illustration form. I don't think it's just the animation that attracts audiences. There really are a good number of people who still want the classic traditional animation look. They may not be the majority, but there's enough of them.

I do know that some younger kids, especially ones who have been raised on CGI, will prefer CGI because they think it's better because they don't really think...past appearences, and they don't want anything that looks "old". But they are the exception.

Honestly I think hand-drawn is better in every single way than CGI.

[Dacey]

Snore:

http://impawards.com/2011/winnie_the_pooh_ver3.html

[Ben]

Gotta say that it's that first, much criticized "Oh Pooh" poster that I'm liking most. The others seem to be nothing more than clipart versions of other Pooh images that some poor guy in the merchandising department no doubt spends all his days just churning out.

There's absolutely nothing special about this at all, not least the totally non-descriptive title. "Winnie The Pooh". Ha, we've seen that. Bring us a new Pooh story. Winnie The Pooh And The... or, as I mooted earlier on, The Further Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh. Just his name on his own doesn't get things back to basics, it just sounds like Disney is as insipidly behind the film as we are to see it.

Watch it get smashed by Potter. Oh pooh...

[carlminez]

I've never seen any Winnie the Pooh movie, or series. I didn't even read the book to be honest. But this is probably the first animated feature that I can honestly say I'm interested in.

Finally, a traditionally animated film with cute, talking animals!

[EricJ]

I've never seen any Winnie the Pooh movie, or series. I didn't even read the book to be honest. But this is probably the first animated feature that I can honestly say I'm interested in.

As noted, it's a deliberate all-out, old-school stylistic tribute to the 60's shorts in 1977's "The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh", which is now safely available on disk:
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/The_M ... h/60021868

Like Tron Legacy, it helps to go back and Netflix the old classics before watching the new retro-tributes.