Writing In Salon This Morning …
… film critic Andrew O’Hehir says Disney’s latest offering in the long-running adventures of everyone’s favorite little tubby all stuffed with fluff might just be the key to resting back Disney’s animation fortunes from the Pixar machine.

“Can a Bear of Very Little Brain redeem the tarnished reputation of Walt Disney’s venerable animation studio and stake his place on the cultural landscape alongside Buzz Lightyear and Lightning McQueen? That’s a lot to ask of a tubby little cubbie whose principal concern is finding a pot of honey — sorry, hunny — but Disney’s whimsical and charming new “Winnie the Pooh” feels simultaneously like a return to the company’s more innocent past and a refreshing new direction. Specifically recalling the hand-drawn animation style of the widely beloved 1966 “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree” and its sequels (anthologized in the 1977 collection “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh”), and delivering only the faintest contemporary tweak to the Milne material, Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall’s “Winnie the Pooh” will thoroughly delight both the under-10 set and their nostalgic parents. Look for this to be a surprisingly potent sleeper hit; I’m going a second time this weekend.”

Read the full story here.

Let the record show that I’m a huge fan of the original, Sterling Holloway-voiced “Pooh” movies of the 1960s. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve watching these films on “The Wonderful World of Disney” when it aired on Sunday nights on NBC. I’ll be taking my daughter to see this flick and she’ll be clutching the vintage Pooh bear I had when I was a little boy.