The Magical World of Winnie the Pooh - All For One, One For All

I remember when Winnie the Pooh was a set of books dog-eared and wrinkled on the yellow bookcase in my room, basically unread since I was six. Sure I leafed through the drawings every so often for inspiration, even copied E.H. Shepard’s sketches to impress girls, but I haven’t done that for weeks now, maybe even a month. I’ll never have need to do that again though, because through the miracle of Disney, Pooh has been preserved forever in an animated format on DVD.

This DVD, which is no doubt one in a series of one thousand, comes complete with four episodes running at around ten minutes a piece along with a couple of ‘Edu-tainments’ lecturing children on the joy of sharing. Whilst these have been recently animated, judging by the quality of the 3D animation, they aren’t really enough to carry the full weight or price of a 56 minute DVD.

Each ten-minute job was animated in the late '80s on ‘cels’ (these are clear plastic with characters painted on them and hail from the Dark Ages before computers) and this is occasionally apparent when we witness the artefacts, fibres and even shooting errors in the cartoons. Made on small budgets for sale to local and international markets, the cartoons do still manage to look okay for the most part, but the stories are weak and the morals heavy handed.

Winnie the Pooh has been a long time favourite for children and adults the world over, and will no doubt find popularity in the DVD market, but a disc like this one doesn’t represent true value for money.

Okay, the video is nice. That much is true. The backgrounds have been illustrated magnificently, with a wide range of bright colours implemented to maintain eye contact for the kids. One thing Disney did do for Pooh was colour his world. Not to say the whimsical watercolours of Shepard’s work weren’t wonderful; they were, but in Disney’s Pooh the full width and breadth of the artist’s palette is employed. The vision is crisp, clear and well transferred, though naturally being made for TV we only have the 1.33.1 aspect screen.

The animation is, as we expect from Disney, very nice, if a little simplified but that all comes down to budget again. Until recently, I fully believed Disney didn’t make animation errors, but in viewing a few DVDs recently, I have discovered they do (see also The Black Cauldron). One episode within this DVD, Donkey for a Day, sees Eeyore (insert ‘tradeMark’ logo) sitting in the rain where the cycling shower is poorly shot, leaving some streaking drops hanging in the air for over a second. It doesn’t sound like much, but invisible animation is when you don’t ‘see’ something because it is error free. Once there’s an error it glares out at you. Now, I know what you’re saying, it’s for kids, they’ll never notice. No, but the adults (who are paying) shouldn’t be paying for that, particularly when there are checkers who make sure this sort of stuff doesn’t happen. On top of that, the very few blacks in shadows or night shots are greenish and look grainy.

The audio is alright also, though It’s only Dolby Digital 2.0. Being made for TV on a limited budget this is understandable and it works well enough for its purposes. There is occasional muffling of the character voices, which is irritating and the music gets an equal share of irritation with repeating riffs. My old enemy, ‘stock footage’ makes its impression felt as well in some sound effects you will be familiar with, if not recognise from whence they came. The dialogue is simple too, as I’ve said. Being aimed at a young audience that’s fine because there’s still the occasional line for adults, though nothing racey. Another thing that personally gets me and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, is characters who have only existed two-dimensionally being animated (and therefore voiced) for the first time: the voice is never how I imagined it in my head, nor probably how you heard it in yours either. Nobody’s fault that one, it's just one of those things.

Just a Game and that rhymes with lame. It's the usual fare here, three options to search a series of locales for missing Easter eggs. Once they’ve been found you’re a hero (temporarily - until they ask you to look again. Sigh.) There isn't a prize when you win (and you will win) and they aren’t the Easter eggs we like looking for on DVDs either. Good for kids, but one they would soon tire of.

How can just 56 minutes of animation on a DVD be warranted from a studio that produces so many different features and series? This DVD should have had at least another four ten-minute cartoons on it to deserve its purchase. Not very good value, particularly if you want the whole set (however many there inevitably will be). Piglet says it best in this quote from The Piglet Who Would Be King(included on this DVD):

"Even very small animals must stand up for what’s right."