Christopher Robin (4 Stars)

After "Goodbye Christopher Robin" this is the second film in quick succession that shows the life of Christopher Robin Milne. Whereas the first film showed him as he really was, this is a fictionalised version of his life that strongly diverges from the facts. More of that below.

The cinema today was full mostly of young children with their parents. When I sat down with my friends, all of them adults, I overheard a young boy in the row behind me, probably about five years old, ask his mother, "What are they doing here?" Her reply was, "They want to see Winnie the Pooh as well". "Christopher Robin" features children's characters, and the posters make it look like a children's film, but it's actually a film that has a message only adults can understand:

"However old you are, always remain a child".

That's an easy message to understand, and many adults might smile and accept it in theory, but it's a very difficult philosophy to put into practice. Society expects adults to act like adults. Anyone who doesn't is considered either foolish or insane. Children have great imagination. Children can dream. I sometimes watch my grandson playing with a simple toy, and I can see from the concentration on his face that he's totally involved in what he's doing. Any adult who can't do this has lost something.

The film begins with Christopher Robin saying farewell to Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet and his other friends. They're his stuffed animals, brought to life by his imagination. He has to leave to go to boarding school. He promises Winnie that he will never forget him, even when he's a hundred years old. That's an easy promise for a child to make, but it's a tough promise for an adult to keep. 25 years later he's an executive for a suitcase manufacturing company in London. He doesn't even have time to spend with his wife and daughter, so how can he find time to sit and remember his childhood friends?

Christopher Robin might have forgotten his fantasy friends, but they haven't forgotten him. Winnie the Pooh comes to visit him in London, and Christopher Robin returns to his childhood home in Hundred Acre Wood.

I have a personal attachment to the life of Christopher Robin and can relate to him more than most of my readers. He grew up in a remote house in the woods, where he had no friends of his own age, and he spent his time with his father and his stuffed animals. I grew up in a house on the grounds of Little Aston Hall, and there were no other children around me. I spent my early years walking alone through the fields and meadows, alone with my dreams and my fantasies. In retrospect, I'm surprised that my mother wasn't worried about me when I was gone for hours. When I was eight years old my parents moved to a large town (Walsall), and I changed. I was no longer the same person.

After watching "Goodbye Christopher Robin" two months ago I read up on the life of A. A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin, so I was jolted in the early scenes when the character's biography was changed. To name the things that I noticed:

Robin wasn't his surname, it was his middle name. His correct name was Christopher Milne.

The names of Christopher's wife and daughter are changed, from Lesley to Evelyn and Clare to Madeline respectively. Maybe that's because Lesley Milne is still alive and doesn't want her real name to be used. I wonder what she feels about Hayley Atwell's portrayal of her.

Christopher's father didn't die when he was a child. A. A. Milne died in 1956. The early death in the film puzzled me more than any other change to his life story.

Christopher is shown meeting his wife before the Second World War and leaving for war while she was pregnant, so he didn't see his daughter until she was six. In reality, he got married in 1948 and his daughter wasn't born until 1956.

These are Christopher Milne's stuffed animals, on display in the New York Public Library.

"Christopher Robin" is a very good film, especially if you're old enough to appreciate it. The acting by Ewan McGregor and Hayley Atwell is impeccable. I didn't get a chance to talk to the boy sitting behind me. If I'd spoken to him I would have said, "Remember this film and watch it again when you're 50".