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Piglet's Big Movie Review By Shawn McKenzie 03/21/2003 Most kiddie movies are made with the thought that they need to appeal to adults as well as kids. This makes sense, since it’s the parents who have to drag their kids to these movies and sit there with them. Plus, if you appeal to adults, you can get more money from the adult crowds who come to see the movies without the kids. Piglet’s Big Movie does not attempt to appeal to anyone above the age of seven. After the little kids and the die-hard Winnie the Pooh fans see it, I think the movie will most likely sink.
Pooh (voiced by Jim Cummings) wants to steal the honey from the beehive, and he has devised a complicated plan to get it. It involves getting the bees to come out of the hive, go into another supposedly better hive, and become trapped in it while Pooh and his crew steal the honey. He has enlisted Tigger (also voiced by Jim Cummings), Rabbit (voiced by Ken Sansom), and Eeyore (voiced by Peter Cullen) to help him, but apparently, there is no room in the plan for Piglet (voiced by John Fiedler.) He inadvertently ends up being the most important part in the success of their plan, but since Pooh doesn’t acknowledge his efforts, Piglet feels useless to the gang. He sulks off and disappears somewhere. Once his so-called friends realize that he is gone, they use his scrapbook as a map to try to find him. Pooh’s logic is that, since it is a book of Piglet’s memories, it must remember where Piglet is right now. They enlist their other friends Christopher Robin (voiced by Tom Wheatley), Owl (voiced by Andre Stojka), Kanga (voiced by Kath Soucie), and her son Roo (voiced by Nikita Hopkins), to help in the hunt. As they go along, the memories contained in the scrapbook remind them of stories involving Piglet where he was a big help, or was at least more effective than his friends were. One story involved their acceptance of the arrival of Kanga and Roo, where Piglet was the one brave enough to meet them (and he got a bath from Kanga as a result.) Another involved a trek to the “North Pole,” with Piglet once again being the bravest one. The final one was a story about the construction of Eeyore’s house, and how Piglet was the only one competent enough to construct a house that wouldn’t fall apart. They begin to realize that they have really taken advantage of the pig and didn’t give him much credit. Now they just have to find him to tell him this revelation.
Make no mistake…the very young ones will love this flick. All the kids in the audience I saw this movie with loved it. Their parents, on the other hand, looked relieved that it was over. One of the only things which was tolerable for the parents was the film’s message. Even though Pooh and his posse diss Piglet at first, they give him his props in the end (have I said enough street slang for a kiddie movie review?) Also, the parents seemed to like the new Carly Simon songs (I personally miss the involvement of Kenny Loggins though.) Aside from that, the story was just a little too sappy sweet to be enjoyable for the older crowd. It also felt like a sitcom clip show, with all the flashbacks (actually, they were adaptations of some Pooh short stories that were written by Pooh’s creator, A.A. Milne.) I know they were newly produced, but it felt recycled. I must disclose that I’ve never been a huge Winnie the Pooh fan, and movies like Piglet’s Big Movie might be part of the reason. I suppose that if you are a parent who is used to suffering through “Barney” tapes, you could do much worse than this bear and pig flick. Hey, at least the music is better than the junk that
the purple dinosaur sings! Get the original soundtrack score composed by Carl Johnson, with eight new songs recorded by Carly Simon: Buy this album at
Ratings System:
SEE THIS MOVIE!
Catch this movie at the theater if you can...
Wait until it comes out on video...
Wait until it plays on HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc...
Demand your money back, even if you saw it for free! |
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