The Best Movies I Have Never Seen Before: Ball of Fire (1941)

Ball of Fire (1941) *** ½  

Directed by: Howard Hawks.

Written by: Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder.

Starring:  Gary Cooper (Prof. Bertram Potts), Barbara Stanwyck (Sugarpuss O'Shea), Oskar Homolka (Prof. Gurkakoff), Henry Travers (Prof. Jerome), S.Z. Sakall (Prof. Magenbruch), Tully Marshall (Prof. Robinson), Leonid Kinskey (Prof. Quintana), Richard Haydn (Prof. Oddly), Aubrey Mather (Prof. Peagram), Allen Jenkins (Garbage Man), Dana Andrews (Joe Lilac), Dan Duryea (Duke Pastrami), Ralph Peters (Asthma Anderson), Kathleen Howard (Miss Bragg), Mary Field (Miss Totten).

Howard Hawks’ Ball of Fire is not as well known as his other classic screwball comedies – Bringing Up Baby (1938) or His Girl Friday (1940), probably because it isn’t quite as good. Those two films move at lightning quick speed for their entire running time, never slowing down for a minute to let the audience catch their breath. By comparison, Ball of Fire seems almost slow. That isn’t to say that Ball of Fire isn’t an excellent comedy – it is – but that it is not quite as good as Hawks’ best work in the genre. But there is still plenty to recommend the film on.

The movie stars Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck (who also starred together in Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe released the same year, and previously reviewed as part of this series). Cooper is Professor Bertram Potts, one of 8 professors who have spent almost a decade compiling “all of human knowledge” for a set of encyclopedias. They have made it all the way to the letter S, and Potts has just finished his section on slang, when they meet their garbage man, who tosses out a bunch of words and phrases that Potts had not covered. Fearing his section is hopelessly out of date, he heads out onto the town to learn more about slang – eventually meeting the sassy night club singer Sugarpuss O’Shea (Stanwyck). She initially rejects Potts suggestion that she help him out, but when her gangster boyfriend (Dana Andrews) gets into trouble, and the cops start looking for her, she moves right in with the Professors, thinking it’s a good place to hide out. All eight of them are immediately smitten with her, none more so than Potts. And, as you can probably guess, these opposites really do attract – but than Sugarpuss is an awkward situation, since she lied to them, and now Andrews wants her to run off with him and get married.

As I mentioned before, Ball of Fire doesn’t move with the same lightning quickness that films like Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday did. In fact, the movie has an almost languid pace at times. Yet the screenplay, by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, is full of intelligent, witty dialogue. Hawks’ direction is top notch, as is the cinematography by Gregg Tolland. Gary Cooper is perfectly cast as the uptight, somewhat naïve Potts. Like Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, he is an intellectual who becomes smitten with a woman who moves too fast, and is out of his comfort zone. Cooper, who is best known for his more heroic roles (like his Oscar winning turn in Sergeant York the same year, and oddly enough, also directed by Hawks), but I have always preferred Cooper when he plays the everyman – like here and in Meet John Doe. Stanwyck pretty much steals the movie (which is why she got an Oscar nomination for it – although she should have gotten it for The Lady Eve that year), as the brash woman who comes in and stirs up the professors lives.

Ball of Fire isn’t quite as great as Hawks was capable of making, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a wonderful film. Sugarpuss O’Shea definitely counts as a prototypical “Hawksian” woman, and the film is full of excellent little touches – and supporting performances from the entire cast (I really did like Dan Dureya as a hood for example). Is it a great film? Not quite, but it puts most modern comedies to shame.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Real Life (1979)

Real Life (1979) ***

Directed by: Albert Brooks.

Written by: Albert Brooks and Monica Mcgowan Johnson and Harry Shearer.

Starring: Albert Brooks (Albert Brooks), Charles Grodin (Warren Yeager), Frances Lee McCain (Jeannette Yeager), Lisa Urette (Lisa Yeager), Robert Stirrat (Eric Yeager), Matthew Tobin (Dr. Howard Hill), J.A. Preston (Dr. Ted Cleary).

I’ve always been a fan of Albert Brooks. From his own movies – including Lost in America (1985), Defending Your Life (1991) and Mother (1996) which are three of the funniest movies you will ever see – to his work for other director – like Broadcast News, Taxi Driver and Finding Nemo – to his seemingly endless string of Simpsons guest voices (the best of which is probably Hank Scorpio), Brooks has always made me laugh more than most other actors. And recently in Drive, he scared me, which was shocking because for the most part, Brooks plays a thinly veiled version of himself in his roles. Somehow though, I had never seen his first two films. His first film, Real Life, shows just how talented and funny Brooks can be – as a writer, director and an actor, and while it doesn’t rise to the level of his best work, it is still damn funny. And considering how reality TV has risen since he made this film, it seems almost prophetic at times.

In the film Brooks plays Albert Brooks, a version of himself. He is a filmmaker and standup comedian who has garnered some notoriety because of his short films on Saturday Night Live, and now he wants to move onto feature films. But he doesn’t want to do a scripted movie. Inspired by the groundbreaking PBS series American Family, Brooks wants to make a film documenting the life of one year in the life of the typical American family. In order to ensure they pick the right family, they select 200 to undergo rigorous testing in a “scientific” setting, including role playing games and driving tests. He ends up with two choices, one who lives in Phoenix and the other who lives in Green Bay. Not wanting to spend the winter in Green Bay, he picks the Phoenix family. Husband Warren (Charles Grodin), a vet, his neurotic wife Jeannette (Frances Lee McCain) and their two children – Lisa and Eric. He even sends them to Hawaii for two weeks, so he and his crew can get set up and not disturb them. When they get back, they’ll get right to filming American life as it really is. They have even got a new camera, which will capture life as the human eye does, and is said to be less intrusive, as it gives the camera men more freedom to move around. The fact that the camera is a helmet that looks like a storm trooper out of Star Wars doesn’t seem to phase Brooks. In fact he brags “Only six of these cameras were ever made; only five of them ever worked – we have four of those”. Brooks moves in across the street to monitor the filming, and even hires two psychologists to ensure that they do not put too much of a strain on the family.

What Brooks find though, is what scientists have long known. That the simple act of observing can change the families behavior. And when you have a filmmaker like Brooks, all manic energy, he’s not just observing but becomes an active participant in the drama. When Warren messes up a surgery on a horse, and they capture it on film, he falls into a deep depression, and simply sits around the house all day doing nothing. This won’t do for Brooks. He needs action and excitement, and he tries to goose the family along. He dresses up like a clown to try and make everyone happy, and then tries to counsel the wife when she gets cold feet. With nothing else happening, he even thinks that perhaps he can make something happen with her – even suggesting the possibility of an affair. And of course, he needs a big finale – and he’s determined to get one.

Some of the best moments in the film are little, throwaway visual gags. I love every scene with the guys with the monstrous cameras on their heads, which were supposed to be unobtrusive. Often times, we see them running in the background of a shot, and it never failed to bring a smile to my face. And the performances work as well. Grodin has always been a talented comedic actor, and this is some of his better work, as the normal guy, clearly uncomfortable on camera, and trying too hard. And Brooks himself, is, as always, hilarious.

In 1979, the idea of reality TV was still in its infancy. Brooks admired the American Family PBS series, and thought it would be funny to extend it to see the filmmakers behind the scenes movements as well. Now of course, all you need to get a reality TV show is to be a B list star from the 1980s or have the last name Kardashian (by the way, I still have no idea who the Kardashians are, or why I should care about their lives). If they have “typical American families” on reality TV, it’s because they are either little people, or don’t know about birth control. Brooks saw the comedic possibilities in all of this years before it really hit the big time, and Real Life is an insightful comedy about the whole phenomenon. Still, I think had he waited a few decades to make Real Life, he could have made a truly great comedy, not just a good one.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)

The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) ***

Directed by: Laurence Olivier.

Written by: Terence Rattigan based on his play.

Starring: Laurence Olivier (The Regent), Marilyn Monroe (Elsie), Richard Wattis (Northbrook), Jeremy Spenser (King Nicolas), Sybil Thorndike (The Queen Dowager), Jean Kent (Maisie Springfield).

On the surface, you couldn’t pick two actors worse suited to star in a movie together than Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. He was a serious, Shakespearian actor, used to grand, eloquent dialogue. And she was the famed ditzy blonde, whose seemingly naiveté masked a great actress, oozing with sexuality. While no one is really going to mistake The Prince and the Showgirl for a great film, the two had definite chemistry together, and the film is a good little comedy, where the two play off each other wonderfully. The two apparently clashed on set – with Monroe’s habitual tardiness and fluffed line readings grating on Olivier as both her co-star and her director. He also didn’t like how she showed up with Paula Strasberg to be her acting coach. Strasberg, wife of Lee Strasberg, taught “method” acting, which Olivier despised (while filming Marathon Man, when he found out that Dustin Hoffman stayed up all night before shooting the torture scene to get the right look and feel of being tired Oliver apparently remarked “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”). But the result worked – as even Olivier later admitted.

The movie is a trifling comedy, but an engaging and fun one. Olivier plays the Regent of a small European country in England for the King’s Coronation. He is in charge of his country until his son, the rightful heir to the throne, turns 18, which is coming in the next 18 months. People are worried, because the son has aligned himself with Germany, and when he takes over all of Europe fears war (this is 1911 afterall). The Foreign Office assigns Northbrook (Richard Watts) to keep the strict Regent entertained during his stay. So he takes him to a play, where he is charmed the performance of Elsie (Monroe). So charmed in fact, that she invites her over to the embassy for a late, private supper. Elsie knows this game, but goes along with it anyway.

The movie is a series of comical misunderstandings, and witty banter. You can tell its based on a play, as the structure of the film really does feel like it, even if Olivier and cinematographer Jack Cardiff, do their best to make the film seem less stage bound. The first act of the movie takes places largely in one of the grand rooms of the embassy, with Olivier and Monroe bantering and flirting, first she being offended, and then he being offended, and generally, the evening not working out how anyone planned. When she passes out, he decides he never wants to see her again – but through plot twists that only happen in the movies, she ends up staying with the Regent and his family all weekend. And while at first, he despises her as a “silly American”, gradually she wears him down. Marilyn Monroe can do that to men.

The movie is all witty banter, and the actors make the most of it. I’ve never been quite the fan of Olivier as many are, but the fact that he is a great actor is unquestionable, and he seems to delight in doing fun performances, where he gets to put on goofy accents (I LOVED him in Powell and Pressburger’s 49^th Parallel as a French Canadian). Here, he is a stiff upper lipped, stick in the mud, and is quite hilarious throughout. But it’s Monroe who really steals the movie. She is one of those rare actresses who you quite simply cannot take your eyes off of when she’s onscreen – and she is the center of practically every scene here. This another of her great comedic performances.

The plot is ridiculous of course, and how Monroe’s simple wisdom helps solve all the problems is unbelievable in the extreme. But does that really matter? Not really. This is a movie about Olivier and Monroe, and they are both excellent in the film, which makes it a delight. Not a great film, but a fun one.

DVD Review: Tabloid

Tabloid ****

Directed by: Errol Morris.

Errol Morris is more interested in how people process reality – how they see themselves – than the objective truth. And he finds such fascinating subjects for his documentaries. From the people who run and patronize the pet cemetery in his 1978 debut Gates of Heaven, to the quartet of strange people trying to control the uncontrollable in Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1996), to Fred A. Lechter in Mr. Death (1999), about a man who designed machines to put people to death, who was ostracized for being a Holocaust denier, what Morris really wants to know is how these people see themselves. He was criticized by some for The Fog of War, his Oscar winning 2003 documentary, about Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War, for not providing more context. And again criticized for his Standard Operating Procedure (2006) about the Abu Ghrhaib prisoner abuse scandal, for concentrating on the grunts on the ground, rather than their higher ups. I didn’t share those views. Morris doesn’t need to provide context to the Vietnam War, which is well documented, and it is safe to assume anyone who wanted to see a movie about Robert McNamara knows enough about it to put what he says in context. And he hardly comes across very well in Morris’ movie. And if you want to see a movie that blames the Bush administration for its handling of the War on Terror, you have about 1,000 to choose from. What interested Morris in that film was the pictures themselves – why the soldiers did what they did, and why the photographed it.

His new film Tabloid may just be the most entertaining film he has ever made – and also one of the most maddening, as we never really feel like we’re getting the truth. This is Morris’ point, I think. He is more fascinated with how Joyce McKinney sees herself, and tells her story (and she is a great storyteller) then the whole truth, which will probably never be known because McKinney is the only one talking.

To hear McKinney tell it, she was just a regular, Southern Gal from North Carolina. A beauty queen – a contestant in Miss USA one year. She moves to Utah, and one day locks eyes on the love of her life Kirk Anderson. They fall madly in love, and plan to marry, even though his family disapproves of her. Then one day, Kirk simply vanishes. He doesn’t leave a note, he doesn’t call, he doesn’t take his stuff. He’s just gone. She hires of Private Investigator, who takes a few years to track Kirk down in England. McKinney hires a bodyguard and a pilot, and brings along her friend KJ May to England, where she convinces Kirk to leave the cult that has a hold of him, and whisks him away to a cottage in the English countryside for three days of “fun, food and sex”. She was still a virgin, but gave herself up to help poor Kirk, reeling from religious indoctrination. She ties him to the bed to help him relax. After a weekend that she describes as a honeymoon, they return to London to get legally married. They see a newspaper says Kirk has been kidnapped, so he sets off to set the record straight. The next thing Joyce knows, she’s been arrested for kidnapping and rape (which is ridiculous she says, a woman can’t rape a man it would be like “putting a marshmallow in a parking meter”). Kirk is back in the hands of his cult, and they are making him say all these terrible things about her. The tabloid press is all over this bizarre story, and Joyce has become the center of the universe.

Morris, of course, finds people who contradict McKinney’s story. Anderson was hardly the man of anyone’s dreams, but a hulking, pudgy man with little charm or personality. He didn’t belong to a cult, and he didn’t really disappear into thin air. He was a Mormon, who like all young Mormons, was sent to do his Mission work. The bodyguard McKinney brought to England bailed when they landed, because McKinney and May were hiding surveillance equipment. The pilot, Jackson Shaw (interviewed here) bailed when he discovers they are packing chloroform and fake gun. And of course, Anderson claimed he has drugged and taken to the cottage, where he was shackled to the bed and forced into having sexual intercourse with McKinney for three days.

You can see why this story so fascinated the Tabloid press in England, notoriously much worse than in America. The dubbed the “Manacled Mormon” case, and set about to find everything they could about McKinney – who seems to be loving the attention the case brings her. That is, until they unearth some not so flattering things about her, and then the Tabloids are horrid people, who do nothing but lie. McKinney spends much of her time in front on Morris’ famed Interrotron (a camera that shoots the interviewer looking directly into the camera, but also allows them to look Morris directly in the eye), denying all the stuff that was written about her. She has been working on an autobiography for years now, to set the record straight. Although it’s harder now because much of her documentation was stolen from her car. If you think that’s hard to believe, you also have to admit it’s just as hard to believe that the entire file containing the pornographic pictures of McKinney, that she claims were faked, also completely disappeared from the files of the Daily Mirror.

In his review, Roger Ebert mentioned Rashomon when talking about Tabloid and the comparison makes sense. I don’t believe that McKinney is lying when she tells her story. She believes every word she is saying. But is it the truth? We’ll never know. Three people were in that cottage – KJ May is dead, Kirk Anderson has never told his side of the story to anyone other than the police (and he refused Morris’ request for an interview). So that leaves Joyce McKinney, who is self aggrandizing, obsessed with her “crazy love story” with Kirk, and in the words of one of the reporters “barking mad”. She is also one of the fascinating people you will see in any movie this year.

Movie Review: The Woman

The Woman **

Directed by: Lucky McKee.

Written by: Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee.

Starring: Pollyanna McIntosh (The Woman), Sean Bridgers (Chris), Angela Bettis (Belle), Lauren Ashley Carter (Peggy), Zach Rand (Brian), Shyla Molhusen (Darlin’).

It may seem odd that I watched Lucky McKee’s The Woman less than a week after writing a post about how I don’t feel the urge to watch “extreme” movies any more. And if nothing else, Lucky McKee’s The Woman is extreme. But I did say in that post that if a movie interested me, I’d watch it. And since Lucky McKee made one of my favorite horror films in the last decade – the little seen, extremely creepy May – and his Masters of Horror entry, Sick Girl, was also wonderfully creepy, I consider myself a fan of his. So I watched The Woman, despite its “extreme” reputation, and the presence of writer Jack Ketchum – who some horror fans are huge devotees to, but I’m not one of them. The novels of his that I have read seem to replace suspense with violence that while disturbingly real, is also over the top if that makes sense. That pretty much sums up The Woman as well.

The movie is about a lawyer, Chris (Sean Bridgers) who appears outwardly normal. He lives with his family out in the middle of nowhere, and he enjoys hunting out in the woods that surround his home. One day, he spies what appears to be a “wild” woman, living alone in the woods, killing animals for food. Chris decides to catch her, which he does, and keep her chained in the family’s cellar. He doesn’t try to hide this from his family – in fact he shows the woman off to them all. He says that they need to help her – civilize her – and they are only doing what good Christians would do. His terrified wife Belle (Angela Bettis) says nothing, but clearly doesn’t like the idea. Their teenage daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter) spends most of her time crying. Their littlest daughter, Darlin’, sees nothing wrong with it, but she’s too young to really understand anything. Their son Brian (Zach Rand) though has the same sadistic glint in his eyes as his daddy does – despite the fact he can’t be much more than 14.

At Sundance, where the film premiered, there were apparently many walkouts, and people who were simply offended, calling the film misogynistic and disgusting. (One man even famously said the film should be banned, which is just silly). It certainly is disgusting – in fact disgusting is how you would describe the beginning of the movie, and it gets much, much worse before the end of the movie. The climax produces the type of images that I won’t be able to get out of my head no matter how much I try. I don’t want them there, but they’re there anyway. The charge of misogyny is less clear however. It is clear that Chris, and his son Brian, are misogynists – they view all women as objects, sexual playthings meant merely for their arousal and amusement. It doesn’t matter if it’s the wild woman, their wife, their daughter, their sister, their mother or their secretary. These two are irredeemably evil – even Brian, who is barely into puberty. And yet, it’s also clear that the movie abhors them, presents them as the villains of the movie, who we hope will get them comeuppance. And yet, the other way, the movie feels no sympathy for Belle either, clearly a battered woman, but when you watch what happens to her, it becomes clear that McKee and Ketchum don’t buy the “battered woman defense”.  I think in the end, whatever points the movie is trying to make about gender politics (and the ending makes it clear that the movie is an allegory with some point to make on the subject), it gets lost beneath all the brutality on display, and the films own politics, which appear to me to be muddled.

I can’t say I liked The Woman, because I didn’t. I can’t even say that had I known how extreme the film would be that I even would have watched it, because I probably would not have. What I can say, however, is that McKee remains a gifted director of horror. There are images here that stand out, not just because of their extreme nature, but because of the way McKee shoots them. That cellar is one of the most foreboding locations in recent memory. And the performances are pretty damn good. Pollyanna McIntosh gives an utterly fearless, somewhat mesmerizing performance as The Woman. Sean Bridgers makes for a truly repellant villain. Lauren Ashley Carter somehow finds some tenderness in her character. Less successful is Zach Rand, who like pretty much any 14 year I can think of, doesn’t quite have the chops to make his character as repellant as Bridgers. And Angela Bettis, so good in May and Sick Girl, is too one note here. I’m still waiting to see if she can play a somewhat normal character and not someone full of nervous ticks.

And I can also say that I think The Woman is precisely the film that McKee and Ketchum wanted to make. The two tried to collaborate on a 2008 film, Red, with Brian Cox, but a few weeks into filming McKee (along with Bettis) were fired and replaced (the end result was a film that was barely released, and remains unseen by me). There are horror fans out there who will claim that The Woman is a twisted masterpiece. You know who you are – and The Woman is a film for you. But not for anyone else.

TV Movie Review: George Harrison: Living in the Material World

George Harrison: Living in the Material World *** ½

Directed by: Martin Scorsese.

George Harrison will always be known as the “Quiet One” when people discuss The Beatles. John was the troubled poet, Paul the musical genius behind the catchy pop melodies, and Ringo Starr will always be the lovable doofus of the band. The fascinating thing about Martin Scorsese’s new, three and half hour documentary about George Harrison is not that it tells a story that we don’t already know – since The Beatles are one of the most documented bands in history – but that it tells the story from a point of view that we have not heard before. Most stories about The Beatles begin when the troubled John met the upper middle class Paul, and musical magic was born. This one filters everything through the point of view of George. So John is a little bit more than troubled – the story told about his dumping a beer over a poor woman’s head for no reason makes him seem like a little more twisted. And musical genius hardly describes John at the beginning, as when George met him and Paul, John only had four strings on his guitar – and didn’t even know there was anything wrong with that. In this story, George was the most talented musician, and once the band becomes hugely successful, starts to think that if his two jackass band mates could write a song, then so could he. He writes hundreds of songs, only a few ever end up on the bands albums (and when they do, the rest of the band doesn’t seem to put as much effort into them, which is why George thought he might need to bring in Eric Clapton to help record While My Guitar Gently Weeps). Finally, the bickering becomes too much for everyone involved, and the most successful band in history breaks up.

The first half of Scorsese’s documentary is, for me anyone, the more fascinating of the two because it brings this new twist to it. What becomes clear is that even though all four Beatles love each other that the success simply became too much for all of them. George was tired of being shunted off to the background and had simply had enough. But all four Beatles had their reasons for ending everything. As Ringo relates, when he wanted to leave the band during the recording of the White Album, he went to Paul and told him that he was tired of seeing the other three band members so close, and he felt like an outsider, to which Paul replied, “I thought it was the three of you who were close, and I was the outsider”. Ringo then goes to John, who says in essence the same thing. Tellingly, Ringo doesn’t even go to George before he takes off for his vacation.

What also becomes clear is just how much George changed from the time the band was formed until the time it broke up. While the four Manchester boys started out having pretty much everything in common, the fame of the band affected each differently. It was George who became heavily interested in Eastern religion, music and culture, and while the others briefly became involved to, for them it was a passing fad. For George, it became a way of life.

And this, in essence, is why I think Scorsese felt the need to make this documentary in the first place. Like Scorsese, Harrison was born and raised Catholic, although he struggled with his desire to be good, and the weakness of his flesh. This is a theme that Scorsese has returned to time and again throughout his work, and in Harrison, he sees a sort of kindred spirit – someone who has poured this conflict into his art. I was also reminded of Scorsese’s Kundun, about the Dalai Lama, while watching this documentary. Kundun is one of Scorsese’s least successful films, because it seems to be lacking in conflict. Rather Scorsese was expressing his admiration towards the Dalai Lama, who seems to have found the inner peace that he was been searching for his entire life. Harrison had a touch of that as well.

The second half of the documentary, about Harrison’s life after the Beatles, is a little less successful than the first – mainly I think because while it does an excellent job of presenting the person Harrison showed to the world and to those closest to him, it never quite gets under Harrison’s skin. We are told that Harrison could be dark, that he was “always popular with women” even though he spent years married to the same woman, but this darkness and this weakness are not fully explored. I think it’s because Harrison kept these parts of himself mainly to himself. And since Harrison is dead, he cannot explain them. The archival interviews we see with him, seem a little to surface level.

Scorsese has always been interested in music and documentaries. He made one of the greatest concert films of all time with The Last Waltz, about The Band, and his Shine a Light, a concert films with an aging Rolling Stones is better than it probably should be. His greatest contribution to the musical documentary however remains No Direction Home, about Bob Dylan’s early career. That film was masterful in its depictions of Dylan, and all of his contradictions, as well as a wonderful portrait of America in the 1960s and 70s. George Harrison: Living in the Material World is not quite the film that No Direction Home – in part because Dylan is seemingly a more complex persona, and in part because it doesn’t try to cover so much ground. Living in the Material World is still one of the best documentaries you are likely to see this year however – and a fascinating portrait of the “Quiet” Beatle.

DVD Review: Winnie the Pooh

Winnie the Pooh ***

Directed by: Stephen J. Anderson & Don Hall.

Written by: Stephen J. Anderson & Clio Chiang & Don Dougherty & Don Hall & Kendelle Hoyer & Brian Kesinger & Nicole Mitchell & Jeremy Spears based on the works of A.A. Milne & Ernest Shepard.

Starring: Jim Cummings (Winnie the Pooh / Tigger), Bud Luckey (Eeyore), Craig Ferguson (Owl), Jack Boulter (Christopher Robin), Travis Oates (Piglet), Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Kanga), Wyatt Dean Hall (Roo), Tom Kenny (Rabbit), Huell Howser (Backson), John Cleese (Narrator).

My daughter is only two and a half months old, so obviously I have not been able to introduce her to movies yet. One day I will however, and while she doesn’t need to become as obsessed with them as I am (in fact, it will be better for her social life if she doesn’t) I would like her to appreciate film as an art form, as I do. That journey will have to start somewhere, and I can think of no better place than Winnie the Pooh – not necessarily their latest cinematic adventure, but it’s as good as anything else.

I haven’t paid too much attention to Pooh and the gang for years now – Piglet’s Big Movie, The Tigger Movie and Pooh’s Heffalump Movie came and went and barely registered on my radar, and I certainly didn’t watch any. But when the latest one came out, inspired by my new daughter, I decided to rent it and see what I thought. It’s amazing how quickly you can sink back into the characters you remember as children. Lovable, hungry Winnie the Pooh, always on the hunt for honey (or as he spells it “Huny”), his meek, adorable sidekick Piglet. The exuberant Tigger, always full of energy and confidence. Know it all Owl. Rabbit, who I’m pretty sure has OCD. Motherly Kanga, and her son Roo. And my personal favorite, the constantly depressed Eeyore. I’m not sure what it says about me that my favorite is Eeyore, probably nothing good, but I love him anyway. These animals, along with Christopher Robin, are known to pretty much everyone in the world, and although I hadn’t spent any time with them in probably two decades, I sunk back into their world easily.

The reason why Winnie the Pooh is appropriate for even the youngest of kids is because there is nothing really all that scary about it. There is never any real conflict, just a series of adventures the group has. Even in the classic Pooh vignette where he and Piglet think they are being followed, everyone can tell that it’s just their own footprints in the snow that freak them out. In this movie, there are two main storylines. The biggest is about poor Eeyore, who has lost his tail. Everyone pitches in to try and find it, and when they fail to do that, they try to find him a replacement tail – although none suits poor Eeyore. The other involves a note left by Christopher Robin telling them that he will be Bak Sun – which smarty pants Owl interprets to mean that he has been kidnapped by the evil Bak Sun, and they must try and get him back.

At barely an hour long, Winnie the Pooh is short enough for even kids with the briefest of attention spans. It was also just about perfect for me, because while I enjoyed getting back into this world at first, as it moved along, I was less enthralled with it. Nothing much happens in Pooh’s world, and that’s part of its charm, but it also means that after a while, your mind wanders. Nevertheless, I must admit I enjoyed my return trip to see these old friends, so long ago forgotten by me. I’m sure by daughter will love them just as much as I did.