Anyone who’s grown up can attest to the fact that adulting is hard.
And that’s one of my key takeaways from Marc Forster’s live-action “Christopher Robin.”
Adulting is hard–and sucks most of the time. And for Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor), his current life is not exactly how he envisioned it to be. It’s a far cry from his fun, thrilling, and more fun younger days when doing nothing gives him, and his furry friends, something to do.
Significantly older but not necessarily wiser, Christopher makes unwise decisions on the things that matter most: family. He spends most of his time working. One day, on one of the most important days of his work life, he stumbles upon his old friend, Pooh, who needs help finding their other friends.
Despite himself, Christopher finds himself going back to the place where he spent most of his childhood: the Hundred Acre Wood. Although reluctant to be there, Christopher ends up quite happy and excited to see his old playmates and saves them from the heffalump they think is haunting them.
Now that he supposedly knows better as an adult, Christopher Robin unknowingly becomes the very creatures they feared as kids: heffalumps. He loses his cool and snaps at Pooh and ends up scaring his former best friend away.
Mild and kind-hearted that he is, Pooh eventually helps his friend see things a lot more clearly, by making him remember the beauty and lessons of their childhood.
“Christopher Robin” is a heart-warming story about friendship and self-rediscovery. Of course, it also tackles the universal theme of love for family.
Backed with a solid script, the movie does a decent job of giving our furry friends more depth, wisdom. Here, Pooh and friends were not just adorable, they were wise beyond their years. Wiser, in fact, than Christopher Robin.
And that’s the beauty of the film for me. It has a simple plot but it reeks of so much life lessons you’d feel bad not to heed Pooh’s advice on anything.
What appealed to me most was the fact that Pooh delivers the simplest questions yet they pierce the deepest. When Christopher Robin found himself back at the Hundred Acre Wood, agitated, he snaps at Pooh at almost anything but Pooh manages to warm our hearts by asking the most innocent and simple questions, which Christopher Robin dismisses because he believes Pooh doesn’t know anything and that things are not that simple.
It was in these scenes when I found myself holding back tears because you’ll feel for Pooh who only wants to be with his friend. He asks these innocent questions because he sincerely wants to understand what his friend is going through but Christopher Robin treats him as if he’s the enemy.
So enough, Christopher Robins realizes the errors of his ways especially with his wife, Evelyn, (Hayley Atwell) and daughter, Madeline (Bronte Carmichael), and learns that the life we’ve overcomplicated will always be ironed out by life’s simple and most basic truths.
I don’t know about you but, the truth is, Christopher Robin is a must-see film. It’s not outstanding according to modern conventions but its adorable characters and the lessons they provide will make this one of the most heartwarming family movies you’ll ever see.
And, oh, it will teach you that, with the right mindset, adulting isn’t all that bad.
