Winnie the Pooh

The new Winnie the Pooh clocks in at just over an hour, which is just enough time for kids not to have their attention spans threatened and for parents to remember why we all cared about Pooh in the first place. The movie is deliberately old-fashioned, with a shambling, episodic plot (Eeyore gets a new tail, Pooh and the gang think Christopher Robin has been kidnapped) and a refreshing lack of irony or pandering to adult nostalgia. Jim Cummings returns to the voices of Pooh and Tigger (he voiced both roles in the 1980's); his performance as Pooh is the ideal mix of gentleness and a budding desire to explore and make mischief, something that the movie's target audience will appreciate even if they're not old enough to know why. Whether it was smart or dumb to release Winnie the Pooh opposite Harry Potter won't matter in the end, since Pooh and his friends will have (and deserve) a long life on video and generations of adoring kids. Long live the Hundred Acre Wood.