Over the past two decades, many a movie studio has experienced a case or two of sequelitis. The most obvious symptom of sequelitis is the production of sequels to many of the studio’s beloved classic films. The sequels started off taking the form of direct to home market releases, but as the disease progressed, some of the sequels began showing up in theaters. Though animation remains a favorite target of sequelitis, live-action films have succumbed to the disease as well. Is any film truly safe?
A sequel is not always a bad thing, even though very few movies actually need sequels. Toy Story told a complete and satisfying narrative that did not demand a continuation. But the sequel it got was a great movie, even better than the original. Even Star Wars (A New Hope) didn’t need a sequel. Had The Empire Strikes Back never been made, audiences could have assumed that the destruction of the Death Star turned the tide in the rebellion’s favor, taken what little they knew of Anakin Skywalker as fact, and gone on their merry ways. The few films that actually require a sequel because they do not tell a complete story on their own are usually sequels themselves, second films in a planned trilogy that started with a highly successful movie. Since a follow-up movie is a sure thing, the filmmakers can afford to leave viewers hanging, knowing that they will have a subsequent film to finish the story. Aside from these rare cases, most movies can stand alone.
So if very few movies need sequels, what sets “sequelitis” apart from legitimate attempts to continue the world and story of a film? The most obvious answer is “quality.” A legitimate sequel is usually made by the same creative team as the first film, stars the same voice actors, and is released in the same venue. The legitimacy of a sequel starts to drop as it deviates from the conditions under which the original was created. The original creative team is rarely on board, whether they are still alive or not. The animation may be done by an outside or overseas studio rather than the studio that animated the original film. The budget may shrink. Voice actors may be replaced. A sequel to a theatrically released movie may come out for the home market only. In the worst cases, the end result feels less like a continuation of the original movie and more like a cheap knock-off.
Disney’s own case of sequelitis began in 1994 with the release of The Return of Jafar, a direct-to-video sequel to the studio’s hit film Aladdin. The movie was generally panned by critics and fans – who started calling the direct-to-video releases “cheapquels” – as little more than a pilot for the TV show that quickly followed it. The animation was much closer to television quality than the feature film that preceded it. Though much of the original voice cast returned, Robin Williams was conspicuously absent, due to disputes over the use of his voice and name in the promotion of the film and related merchandise. Dan Castellaneta, best known as the voice of Homer Simpson, took over the role of the Genie and continued to play that character on the TV series.
Despite the criticisms, Disney continued to release direct-to-video sequels to many of its best-loved films. The quality slowly improved, but the movies still came off as cheap cash-ins rather than legitimate attempts to create new stories equal to the original films. Many Disney fans saw the constant churning out of low quality sequels as a major factor in the erosion of the Disney film brand. Eventually Disney got the idea that these sequels could be released theatrically. The first such film to get this treatment was The Tigger Movie, which I’ll be discussing today.
Now if Disney had to make a sequel to something, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is not a bad choice. After all, A. A. Milne himself had written numerous stories and poems about his most famous creations, collected into no less than four books. The original Disney film was actually a collection of previously released featurettes. Prior to the release of The Tigger Movie, Disney had already featured Pooh and his friends in two television shows, four holiday specials for television, and even a previous direct-to-video sequel. From the beginning, the bear of very little brain was not confined to a single work. The denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood were an evergreen property long before Disney started making new movies starring them. So when Tigger took the lead role in a new theatrical film, it was automatically less jarring than the later sequels to films that had not been revisited in animation for decades.
I really don’t know why Disney insisted on putting the word “movie” in the titles of this and the subsequent theatrically released Pooh films. It might be intended to differentiate the movie from any Winnie the Pooh TV shows and direct-to-video releases that might come along. Mostly, it just seems redundant.
Though it’s technically a sequel, The Tigger Movie doesn’t require the audience to have seen The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh or any other Pooh story to understand it. Despite the fact that most people can be counted on to be familiar with Winnie the Pooh and his friends already, the film delivers a quick introduction of the characters and the premise that they are the toys of a boy named Christopher Robin. There is a live-action bit at the beginning where we get a look around Christopher Robin’s room and meet stuffed toy versions of all the characters before settling on the book Winnie the Pooh. This is a little weird. While it’s true that Christopher Milne’s stuffed toys inspired his father to write the Pooh stories and the book device was often important in the original Disney film, here it creates something of a disconnect. Are these characters the toy animals of a real boy brought to life by his imagination? Or are all of them – the boy included – characters in a book? Anyway, the most direct reference to previous tales of any kind is Tigger complaining that most of these stories seem to be about Winnie the Pooh before deciding that this movie should focus on him. And if you’re watching this movie, chances are you’re at least aware that other stories about Pooh exist.
Tigger is essentially the same character that he is in previous Disney projects he appears in. He is a high-energy child, perhaps more of a child than nearly any other character in the Hundred Acre Wood. It’s important that the audience sees him as a child because it makes his biggest character flaw – his self-centeredness – understandable and forgivable. Tigger has little concept of others’ feelings and how they might differ from his own. He is generally too wrapped up in his own needs and desires to see how his actions affect his friends. His joie de vive can be infectious, but his constant need for play gets annoying to the other characters when they have other things they want or need to do. Since we se Tigger as a child, we know that he isn’t trying to be insensitive; he simply doesn’t know any better.
On this particular fall day, Tigger is looking for someone to join him in his very favorite activity: bouncing. But all of his friends are busy preparing for the coming winter. Food-obsessed Pooh is counting honey pots to make sure he has enough, nervous Piglet needs to gather firewood, maternal Kanga has any amount of chores to do, and soon everyone is involved in trying to remove a large rock Tigger unknowingly sent careening down on Eeyore’s house. The only character who would be happy to bounce with Tigger is little Roo, the film’s one major character who is literally a child. Though Tigger never purposefully brushes Roo aside, he doesn’t go out of his way to ask Roo to come bouncing either. Over the course of the film, it becomes clear that Roo is the younger child to Tigger the big kid. So it just may not have occurred to Tigger that Roo would be an ideal playmate.
Like a child among adults, Tigger can’t understand why his pals can’t drop everything and do what he wants to do. Anal retentive Rabbit, the closest thing the Pooh gang has to an adult and the one most irritated by Tigger and his bouncing, is predictably furious when Tigger’s attempt to bounce the boulder off of Eeyore’s house lands the boulder, Rabbit’s elaborate contraption for removing the boulder, and everyone else in a muddy pond. But none of the other characters are all that happy about it wither and at last regretfully point out that they don’t share Tigger’s enthusiasm or aptitude for bouncing because they aren’t tiggers themselves. This realization that his friends don’t share his passion sends Tigger into a depression. Tigger wants someone to play with, a desire that a suggestion from Roo turns into a search for Tigger’s family.
Roo’s suggestion that Tigger might have a family who could bounce with him is a bit of a plot convenience. It’s been clear from the start that Roo would be happy to bounce with Tigger. But instead of offering to do this, Roo’s first suggestion to the gloomy Tigger is that he should find another tigger to bounce with. Tigger does explain his problem as “No one to bounce with” when Roo is standing right there and it’s not clear if Roo’s sad reaction is sympathy for Tigger’s plight or personal hurt that Tigger doesn’t see Roo as someone he could bounce with. By the time Roo does offer to play with Tigger, Tigger is too taken with the idea of a family of tiggers to even notice Roo. Once again, he’s not intentionally rude; just wrapped up in his own thoughts.
When Tigger’s search for his family proves fruitless, leaving him depressed once more, Roo gathers his friends together to have Owl write Tigger a letter from his family. Unfortunately, this backfires, as Tigger convinces himself that the letter means his family is coming to visit. (I’m amazed that Tigger was able to read the letter accurately to begin with, since everyone knows Owl can only write sentences like “HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY.”) None of Tigger’s friends can bring themselves to tell him the truth, so they all dress up as tiggers to attend Tigger’s family reunion, with predictably disastrous results. Angered and hurt by the deception, Tigger sets out to find his family alone, just as the first storm of winter arrives.
Disney did make an effort to connect this film to Many Adventures. One of the most notable similarities is the style of backgrounds. Like it’s predecessor, The Tigger Movie takes place in a world of watercolors and ink lines, intended to resemble the E. H. Shepard illustrations from the original books. There doesn’t seem to be quite as much ink detail in the backgrounds of this film as there was in the backgrounds of Many Adventures, but the effect still works to suggest book illustrations and childhood memories. Another nod to the Shepard illustrations can be found in the films closing credits. The drawings that recap the story of the movie as the credits roll by are done in Shepard’s style. The characters themselves are drawn with a slightly rough line, which fits with both the handmade look of the backgrounds and the look of some of the classic Disney films that used the then new Xerox machines to copy the animators’ drawings directly onto cels. The animation isn’t done by Disney Feature Animation, but it is generally good – anywhere from high quality TV animation to an okay feature film. There are problem areas here and there, such as Roo’s ear fluttering oddly in one shot or the rather distracting autumn leaves blowing around in several scenes. Overall though, it’s quite watchable, and certainly leaps and bounces ahead of Return of Jafar. The film’s art director was actually Toby Bluth, brother of Don Bluth. If Toby Bluth shares his brother’s love of classic Disney animation, it’s a good bet that he had a lot to do with the visual references to Disney’s first Pooh film found in The Tigger Movie.
Most of the cast and crew of Many Adventures had either died or retired by the time The Tigger Movie began production. But Disney still took pains to employ actors attached to the first Pooh film or the franchise – with one notable exception who I’ll discuss later. In the process of producing various Pooh TV series and specials, Disney had assembled a new cast who have become the official voices of the Pooh characters and provide most of the voices in this film. The chief exception is Roo, who is generally played by a young boy and is necessarily recast every few years. There is one actor who performed in both Many Adventures and The Tigger Movie. John Fielder gave Piglet his quavering voice from the beginning until he passed away in 2005.
Disney also made a smart move in hiring the Sherman Brothers – Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman – to pen the film’s songs. The Sherman Brothers wrote the score for many of Disney’s best loved musicals, including The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins, and most importantly in this case, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Though they had provided music for several Disney theme park attractions (Ever get “it’s a small world” stuck in your head? Blame the Shermans.), the Sherman Brothers had been absent from the world of Disney movie musicals for nearly thirty years. Their return to the big screen (or the big speakers) gave Disney fans who might have otherwise passed on what they saw as just another “cheapquel” a little more reason to give the film a try. While not the pair’s best work, the songs are definitely catchier and more memorable than those in most of the Disney sequels. My two favorites are “The Whoop-de-Dooper Loop-de-Looper Alley-Ooper Bounce” and “How To Be A Tigger.” The former has Tigger trying to teach an enthusiastic Roo how to do the complicated bounce that Tigger has decided is his family’s signature bounce. It’s a simple premise, but the rapid fire rhyming and wordplay make it a lot of fun and the closest thing the movie has to a “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” “How To Be A Tigger” follows most of our friends as they disguise themselves as tiggers in order to attend Tigger’s family reunion and try to figure out how to act the part. The lyrics provide a nice window into how each of the characters views Tigger. Eeyore’s gloomy verse suggesting that the best way to act like a tigger is to wreck everything in sight is a particular highlight. There are a few musical missteps; “Pooh’s Lullabee” is largely superfluous and “Your Heart Will Lead You Home” – sung by Kenny Loggins – is little more than a typical pop anthem over the end credits of any movie. Still, the Sherman’s return to Disney musicals is a welcome addition to this movie and one of its biggest strengths.
The story, while predictable, is surprisingly engaging. Part of what kept me invested in the outcome is that there are two characters who give the story its heart. If Tigger ever got too obnoxious or too thick-headed for me to care about his story when already knew roughly where it would end up, there was sweet little Roo, who wants nothing more than to make Tigger happy and win his friendship. As I’ve said in the past, cute is very much a matter of personal taste, but Roo strikes me as staying well on the right side of the line. Neither his voice nor his actions are overly saccharine. While Tigger can cross the line into annoying from time to time, it is in keeping with who Tigger is and has been since Many Adventures. Another point in the story’s favor is how much of the direction of the plot is determined by Tigger’s character. If anyone other than Tigger were the protagonist, he might have realized far earlier that Roo would have been more than happy to play with him or not leapt to the conclusion that the letter he received meant that his family was coming to visit him. There’s a particularly nice moment where Tigger is engrossed in his search for his family tree (which he believes is an actual tree) and Pooh starts to tell Tigger that now Pooh and his friends are no longer busy, they would be glad to go bouncing with Tigger. But Tigger doesn’t even notice. It drives home the point that Tigger isn’t really as friendless as he may think; he just gets so focused on his current course of action that he can’t see anything else.
This musical number comes in between my discussion of the film’s strengths and my discussion of its flaws because I keep going back and forth on how I feel about it. On the one hand, Tigger’s fantasies of what his extended family might be like are among the most creative parts of the film. The changes in drawing style as Tigger sings about his illustrious tigger ancestry throughout the ages are particularly fun. While not one of my favorites, the song “Round My Family Tree” is a good one that effectively conveys Tigger’s excitement at the thought of getting to meet his family. But on the other hand, the sequence breaks one of the major rules of Winnie the Pooh: it places the characters in a modern setting. Now I don’t believe that all Winnie the Pooh stories must be clearly set in 1920s England. But having the characters interact with modern objects, settings, and concepts is something I regard as verboten. If Winnie the Pooh is to be set in a specific era and not the vague, timeless past, then it should be roughly the era in which the original books are set. Pooh e-mailing Piglet or Eeyore sporting an iPod is just disconcerting. So even though it is just a fantasy, I feel like Tigger imagining himself as an astronaut meeting and alien tigger, his family squabbling on a Jerry Springer-like talk show, and a tigger who resembles Marilyn Monroe is crossing a line. What’s particularly odd is that otherwise, the film does a very good job of setting its story in days past. The time period is mostly nondescript, but there are a few little details like Christopher Robin’s toy plane in the opening or the old-fashioned camera he uses at the end that loosely define the era in which these events take place.
Disney’s mistake in the casting of The Tigger Movie almost outweighs the good they did by keeping John Fielder in the role of Piglet and hiring the Sherman Brothers to write the songs. The one main voice actor from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh who was still alive and still working when The Tigger Movie was in production was Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger himself. Winchell continued to do voice work – mostly as Tigger – well into the 1990s. But in that last decade, possibly due to Winchell’s age, Tigger was also being voiced by the ubiquitous Jim Cummings, who has become the official voice of Pooh. Winchell did try out for the part, but was told that his voice had become “too scratchy” for Winchell to play Tigger, denying the man who had originated the role what could have been his final chance to play the bouncy stuffed tiger. (Winchell was seventy-six at the time and passed away in 2005.) The happy ending to this story is that Disney’s Imagineers were able to right this wrong by hiring Winchell to voice Tigger in the “Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” theme park attraction. I think Tigger sounds just fine on the ride and I have never heard anyone complain about the voice, further evidence that the film’s casting directors made a mistake here.
A problem that many of the Disney “sequelitis” sequels share is an almost over-eagerness to remind viewers of the original film. Of course any sequel, legitimate or otherwise, is going to seek to echo the film that spawned it. Locations will be revisited, lines repeated, shots referenced, songs mimicked, and so on. The trouble comes when a sequel isn’t so much gently tapping its audience on the shoulder with nods to the original as it is repeatedly elbowing them in the ribs. The references become blatant, forced, and even a little desperate in their attempts to connect the new film with the first one. Unfortunately, this desperation to ape the original is largely dumped on Tigger. One of the film’s biggest missteps is trying to ensure that absolutely everything we know and love about Tigger from Many Adventures is also present in The Tigger Movie. As a result, the audience is subjected to repeats of such Tigger lines as “T.T.F.N. – Ta-ta for now!,” “I’m Tigger! That’s T-I-double guh-err,” and his song, “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers.” These moments all feel spontaneous in the original, but here, they come off as tired copies. Even some of Tigger’s mixed up words and phrases that are original to this film come off as forced. Thankfully, most of the repetition is confined to the very beginning of the film and all of it isn’t enough to destroy the character’s moments of genuine humor and sincerity. But the moments that do fall flat are almost painfully awkward.
The story usually does a good job of staying focused on Tigger and what he’s up to, but it does occasionally meander. This is probably due to the filmmakers feeling the need to give all of the characters some screen time. We do want to see what Pooh and Piglet and Eeyore are up to while Tigger is trying to locate his family tree. But there are times when their adventures just take time away from the main story. The three characters briefly mistake some local frogs for Tigger’s family and while the scene does have its entertainment value, it really doesn’t add much to the story. Pooh then decides that he had best inspect a honey tree in case it might be Tigger’s family tree, a scene that feels like it was included just to give Pooh more screen time doing what we’ve seen him doing in the first movie. The film’s climax strikes me as the wrong tone for a Pooh film. I can understand the desire to have a high action climax, but the one the filmmakers went with feels too fast-paced for both the normally slow and gentle narrative of this film and the Winnie the Pooh stories in general.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh never needed a sequel and I would be lying if I said that this film feel exactly like the follow-up the original crew of artists would have made had they wished to. This is a fact you kind of have to accept if you are going to evaluate an animation studio’s bouts with sequelitis: these latter-day sequels seldom mirror the older films accurately. Conventions of story, film, and animation have changed in the years since the original film was made and few – if any – studios go out of their way to try to capture every nuance of the source movie. The more time that passes between the original and its sequel, the greater the difference will be. Such sequels are better evaluated on their own merits, separate from the films that inspired them. Think of them like TV shows based on movies, related, not quite in the same league, but still capable of being successful if done right.
Though it isn’t perfect and doesn’t quite measure up to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Tigger Movie does do a lot right. I’m still surprised that I like it as much as I do. It doesn’t take risks or reinvent the Winnie the Pooh stories, but it does remain true to its characters and tell a gentle, entertaining story. While it doesn’t top its predecessor and I expect the upcoming theatrical Pooh movie – an actual Disney Feature Animation production – will surpass it, The Tigger Movie is still a welcome addition to the numerous tales of Winnie the Pooh.
Winnie the Pooh in Russia Too?
The Disney version of Winnie the Pooh is so ominpresent that it’s easy to forget that he is not the only interpretation of Pooh out there. He isn’t even the only animated take on Milne’s famous bear. Above is one of three short films starring “Vinni Pukh,” as the bear of very little brain is known in Russia. Released in 1969, eight years prior to Many Adventures but three years after the first Disney Pooh featurette, this short was directed by influential Russian animator Fyodor Khitruk at the Russian studio Soyuzmultfilm (“Union Animation”). Though both Vinni Pukh and Many Adventures draw from the same source material, they are two very different visions of the characters and their world. The pudgy brown bear, backgrounds that resemble a combination of children’s crayon drawings and Russian folk art, and quick pacing make for a nice change of pace for anyone who might be growing tired of Disney’s take on the Hundred Acre Wood.
All images in this article are copyright Disney. Video by Soyuzmultfilm.
Tags: disney, hand-drawn animation, movies, sequelitis, sequels
