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The innocence of the Winnie the Pooh movies is what engages me the most about them. Here’s an hour, sometimes more but frequently not by much, of gentle, quiet humor, loveable characters, and a complete lack of irony, snark, and pop culture references. The creatures of Hundred Acre Woods learn life lessons, charm with their simple and silly personalities, and live in a world that’s rich and warm with its soft watercolors and solid ink details. It’s easy to enjoy spending time with them.
So here’s Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, one of the weaker entries but still a reliably sweet and innocent hour-plus of entertainment. Here the Hundred Acre Woods learn to examine their prejudices, rethink preconceived notions of “the other,” and learn to show compassion and empathy for the plight of those they once feared/misunderstood. It doesn’t hurt that the symbol of that plea for compassion and empathy is an adorable purple stuffed elephant named Lumpy with a British accent and infectious laugh. He befriends Roo and much of the film is about their budding friendship and unlearning the prejudices the adults taught them about the other.
Then we get to the end and I haven’t felt quite as much empathy for an animated elephant crying for his mother since my last viewing of Dumbo. While Pooh’s Heffalump Movie is not the equal of that masterpiece, it is an enjoyable little featherweight companion story with a tidy little moral for the tots. It’s clearly a direct-to-video effort that got changed at the last minute, so the animation displays those weaknesses and the Carly Simon songs are generally weak, but there’s still plenty to recommend here, like the sight of Roo and Lumpy frolicking through the forest like the innocent children they are. It’s slight but it does its job well.
