''Piglet's Big Movie'' is a 2003 American

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

musical

comedy-drama film Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

released by

Walt Disney Pictures Walt Disney Pictures is an American film production company and subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company. The studio is the flagship producer of live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Studios unit ...

on March 21, 2003. The film features the characters from the ''

Winnie-the-Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh, is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. The first collection of stories about the character was the book ''Win ...

'' books written by

A. A. Milne Alan Alexander Milne (; 18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was an English writer best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh, as well as for children's poetry. Milne was primarily a playwright before the huge success of Winni ...

and E. H. Shepard, and is the third theatrically released ''Winnie the Pooh'' feature. In this film, Piglet is ashamed of being small and clumsy and wanders off into the

Hundred Acre Wood The Hundred Acre Wood (also spelled as 100 Aker Wood, Hundred-Acre Wood, and 100 Acre Wood; also known as simply "The Wood") is a part of the fictional land inhabited by Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in the Winnie-the-Pooh series of children's s ...

, leading all of his friends to form a search party to find him. ''Piglet's Big Movie'' was produced by the Japanese office of Disneytoon Studios and the animation production was by Walt Disney Animation Japan, Inc. with additional animation provided by Gullwing Co., Ltd., additional background by Studio Fuga and digital ink and paint by T2 Studio.

Plot

Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh, is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. The first collection of stories about the character was the book ''Winn ...

Tigger Tigger is a fictional character, an anthropomorphic stuffed tiger. He was originally introduced in the 1928 story collection '' The House at Pooh Corner'', the sequel to the 1926 book ''Winnie-the-Pooh'' by A. A. Milne. Like other Pooh char ...

Eeyore Eeyore ( ) is a fictional character in the ''Winnie-the-Pooh'' books by A. A. Milne. He is generally characterized as a pessimistic, gloomy, depressed, anhedonic, old grey stuffed donkey who is a friend of the title character, Winnie-th ...

and Rabbit are working on a plan to get

honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...

from a beehive by tricking the bees into leaving their hive. Piglet arrives and wants to help, but is told that he is too small to help. The plan goes awry when the bees see through the plan, but Piglet manages to divert the bees into a new hive and trap them. Unfortunately, Piglet's friends take all the credit for themselves when they fail to notice Piglet's heroism, making him leave dejectedly. After the bees break free, Pooh, Rabbit, Tigger, and Eeyore escape to Piglet's house. When they notice that Piglet is missing, they decide to find him after being joined by Roo. Using Piglet's scrapbook as a guide, the five use the pictures to tell the stories depicted therein, leading to several flashbacks. The first story told is when Kanga and Roo first moved to the Hundred Acre Wood. Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Rabbit are afraid of the newcomers and Rabbit concocts a plan to use Piglet as a decoy so they could ransom Roo to force Kanga to leave. When Kanga finds out about the plan, she plays along by pretending that Piglet is Roo, where Piglet learns of how nice she is. Meanwhile, Roo and Rabbit get along and, realizing how nice they are, everyone agrees to let Kanga and Roo stay. The second story is of the expedition to find the North Pole. When Roo falls into the river, Piglet uses a long stick to launch him out. Unfortunately, his heroism is overlooked when he gives the stick to Pooh to try to catch Roo (where he is caught by his mother), and Christopher Robin credits Pooh with finding the North Pole (the stick). Back in the present, the friends regret not sharing the praise with Piglet. The third story concerns the building of

the House at Pooh Corner ''The House at Pooh Corner'' (1928) is the second volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, written by A. A. Milne and illustrated by E. H. Shepard. It is notable for the introduction of the character Tigger. Plot The title comes from a stor ...

. Piglet gets the idea of building Eeyore a house in an area they named "Pooh Corner" and are joined by Tigger to build it. As Tigger and Pooh build the house after finding some neatly stacked sticks, Piglet struggles to keep up and every attempt to build the house falls apart. Tigger and Pooh go to inform Eeyore of the bad news, leaving Piglet behind. When they find Eeyore, he says that he already built himself a house out of sticks, revealing that the sticks Pooh and Tigger found ''was'' his house. Piglet then arrives and leads them back to Eeyore’s newly completed house. Once again, Piglet’s contributions are overlooked as the wind gets the credit for moving Eeyore’s house. Back in the present, an argument between Rabbit and Tigger ends with the scrapbook falling into a river. Without their guide, the friends return to Piglet's house and, after making drawings of Piglet's heroism, the friends again resolve to find Piglet. During their search, they come across several pages from the scrapbook, which have floated downstream, where they find the book's bindings suspended on a hollow log looming over a waterfall. Pooh goes to retrieve it, but he falls into a hole in the log, and the others are unable to reach him. At that moment, Piglet arrives and helps pull Pooh to safety just as the log begins to break in half. Eeyore, Rabbit, Roo and Tigger manage to escape, but the front half breaks off, making the survivors believe that Piglet and Pooh perished. Fotrunately, Pooh and Piglet managed to get out in time by jumping into the bottom half of the log and reunite with their friends. Piglet's friends take him back to his house to show him their new drawings. During a party the next day, Pooh takes Piglet to Eeyore's house, revealing that he changed the sign to read "Pooh and Piglet Corner". When everyone else arrives, Pooh claims that "it's the least

hey Hey or Hey! may refer to: Music * Hey (band), a Polish rock band Albums * ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014 * ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980 * ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title s ...

could do for a very small Piglet who has done such very big things."

Cast

John Fiedler John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second ...

as Piglet * Jim Cummings as

Winnie the Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh, is a fictional Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. The first collection of stories about the character w ...

Andre Stojka Andre Stojka is an American voice actor. He is best known for his role as the voice of Owl in the Winnie-the-Pooh franchises starting with ''Pooh’s Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin'' inheriting the role from Hal Smith after hi ...

Owl Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...

Kath Soucie Kath or KATH may refer to: * Kath (city), the historical capital of Khwarezm * Kath (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname * KATH-TV, the NBC TV station in Juneau, Alaska * KATH (AM), a radio station in ...

as Kanga * Nikita Hopkins as Roo *

Peter Cullen Peter Claver Cullen (born July 28, 1941) is a Canadian voice actor. He is best known as the voice of Optimus Prime in the original 1980s ''Transformers'' animated series, reprising the role many times since 2007. He has also voiced many other ...

Ken Sansom Frank Kenneth Sansom (April 2, 1927 – October 8, 2012) was an American actor. Among his best known roles, Sansom voiced Rabbit in animated television series, television specials, and films for Disney's ''Winnie the Pooh'' franchise from 1988 to ...

as Rabbit * Tom Wheatley as Christopher Robin ** Kath Soucie as Christopher Robin's singing voice

Production

''Piglet's Big Movie'' was produced by Disneytoon Studios, Walt Disney Animation (Japan), Gullwing Co., Ltd, Studio Fuga, and T2 Studio.

Music

American singer-songwriter Carly Simon wrote seven new songs for the film, and performed six of them ("If I Wasn't So Small", "Mother's Intuition", "Sing Ho for the Life of a Bear", "With a Few Good Friends", "The More I Look Inside", and "Comforting to Know"), as well as recording her own version of the Sherman brothers' "Winnie the Pooh" theme song. "The More It Snows" features Jim Cummings and

, as Pooh and Piglet. Simon was accompanied by her children Ben Taylor and Sally Taylor on many of the songs.

Renée Fleming Renée Lynn Fleming (born February 14, 1959) is an American soprano, known for performances in opera, concerts, recordings, theater, film, and at major public occasions. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Fleming has been nominated for ...

accompanied Simon on the song "Comforting to Know". On "Sing Ho for the Life of a Bear" Simon was accompanied by the cast. The soundtrack also features five tracks of the film's score by Carl Johnson, as well as five of Simon's original demonstration recordings.

Songs

Original songs performed in the film include:

Reception

Box office

''Piglet's Big Movie'' was number seven on the box-office charts on its opening weekend, earning $6 million. The film domestically grossed $23 million, half the amount of what ''

The Tigger Movie ''The Tigger Movie'' is a 2000 animated musical comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Television Animation with animation production by Walt Disney Animation (Japan), Inc., written and directed by Jun Falkenstein from a story by Eddie Guzeli ...

'' earned, and it grossed nearly $63 million worldwide.

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film received a "Certified Fresh" rating of 70% based on 77 reviews, and an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's critical consensus is "Wholesome and charming entertainment for young children." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

the film has a score of 62/100 based on reviews from 23 critics. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A, on a scale of A+ to F. Film critic Stephen Holden of ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' called the film an "oasis of gentleness and wit." Nancy Churnin of ''

The Dallas Morning News ''The Dallas Morning News'' is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average print circulation of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885 by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the '' Galvest ...

'' stated that ''Piglet's Big Movie'' was "one of the nifty pleasures in the process", despite her belief that "

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

may be milking its classics."

Accolades

Games

In 2003, Disney released ''

Piglet's Big Game ''Disney's Piglet's Big Game'' is a 2003 action-adventure video game developed by French developer Doki Denki Studio and Hulabee Entertainment, and published by Gotham Games, Disney Interactive Studios, and THQ. The game centers around Piglet an ...

'' for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and

Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, ...

, as well as a CD-ROM game, which was also entitled ''Piglet's Big Game''. The latter is developed by Doki Denki Studio and involves helping Piglet assist in the preparation for a "Very Large Soup Party." In their review, Edutaining Kids praised various features including the adventure/exploration aspect (the game is linear instead of using a main screen) and many of the activities (such as the color mixing, which they said offers an incredible variety of hues), but noted that it is much too brief and that Kanga and Roo are absent.

Sources

The film's plot is based primarily on five A. A. Milne stories: "In which Piglet meets a Heffalump," "In which Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest, and Piglet Has a Bath," and "In which Christopher Robin Leads an Expedition to the North Pole" (chapters 5, 7, and 8 of ''

''); and "In which a house is built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore" and "In which a search is organized and Piglet nearly meets the Heffalump again" (chapters 1 and 3 of ''

The House at Pooh Corner ''The House at Pooh Corner'' (1928) is the second volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, written by A. A. Milne and illustrated by E. H. Shepard. It is notable for the introduction of the character Tigger. Plot The title comes from a stor ...

'').

Releases

The film is released on VHS and DVD on July 29, 2003. Close captioned by the National Captioning Institute with the new Disney National Captioning Institute Close Captioning first used in '' Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure''.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Piglet's Big Movie 2003 films 2003 animated films 2000s adventure films 2000s American animated films 2000s musical comedy-drama films 2003 fantasy films 2000s English-language films American children's animated adventure films American children's animated comedy films American children's animated drama films American children's animated fantasy films American children's animated musical films American films with live action and animation American comedy-drama films American sequel films American animated feature films Animated drama films Animated musical films Winnie the Pooh (franchise) Children's comedy-drama films DisneyToon Studios animated films Winnie-the-Pooh films Walt Disney Pictures films Films directed by Francis Glebas Animated films about friendship 2003 comedy-drama films 2000s children's animated films Films about pigs