Goodbye Christopher Robin - Review

Director: Simon Curtis

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Kelly Macdonald

Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore and co are emblematic figures in countless childhoods across the globe. The iconography of these characters is undeniable but their origin story is significantly lesser known - enter Goodbye Christopher Robin.

Recovering from his war experiences and dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, writer A. A. Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) leaves London for the English countryside and begins to create stories about his young son's growing collection of stuffed animals. The books, including Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, became instant successes, catapulting Milne and his family, particularly his son Christopher Robin (Will Tilston), to intense fame.

Domhnall Gleeson as A. A. Milne and Margot Robbie as his wife Daphne portray the archetypal, repressed British characters to perfection with strong accents and buttoned-up demeanours. They're intensely wealthy and mix in impressive circles and due to their high status, they inevitably defer a lot of their child-rearing duties to their hired nanny, Olive (Kelly Macdonald), which creates a fractious relationship with their only son Christopher Robin (affectionately called Billy Moon). Will Tilston as the young muse of his father's wildly popular series of books is a charming delight and approaches the role with a wide-eyed innocence that serves the character wonderfully as Christopher Robin is entirely unprepared for the significant shift his life is about to undergo as a result of his imaginative play with his beloved stuffed toys.

Aesthetically and materialistically, Goodbye Christopher Robin is an absolute treat. The clothes are inexplicably glamorous, the cars classical cool and the countryside scenery irresistibly idyllic. While the visuals are established, the film and the story it wants to tell suffers from an identity problem; it's undecided as to whether it wants to be a heartwarming, uplifting tale about the power of imagination and its ability to heal a nation or a cautionary tale about the dangers of fame and exploration. Therefore, the emotional weight in crucial moments is lost on us and are rendered ineffective, exacerbated further by the wooden and contrived dialogue that rob the film of much-needed subtlety. However, certain audiences will eat up this very twee period drama and enjoy the quintessential British-ness of it all.

It may be sweet with occasional moments of awe, but unfortunately, Goodbye Christopher Robin suffers from an uninspired approach to its storytelling - for a film about limitless imagination, it lacks any evidence of that all important theme in its execution.

EB