''The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh'' is a 1977 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 anthology

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...

produced by

Walt Disney Productions 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 1 ...

and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. It is the 22nd Disney animated feature film and was first released on a

double bill The double feature is a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatres would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown. Opera use Opera ho ...

with '' The Littlest Horse Thieves'' on March 11, 1977. Its characters have spawned a franchise of various sequels and television programs, clothing, books, toys, and an attraction of the same name at

Disneyland Disneyland is a theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney initially envision ...

Walt Disney World The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, near the cities of Orlando and Kissimmee. Opened on October 1, 1971, ...

, and Hong Kong Disneyland in addition to

Pooh's Hunny Hunt Pooh's Hunny Hunt is a unique trackless dark ride located at Tokyo Disneyland. It is based on the 1977 Disney animated film '' The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh''. History After the rise in popularity of Walt Disney's film adaptation of Wi ...

Tokyo Disneyland (local nickname ''TDL'') is a theme park at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, near Tokyo. Its main gate is directly adjacent to both Maihama Station and Tokyo Disneyland Station. It was the first Disney park to ...

Plot

The film's content is derived from three previously released animated featurettes Disney produced based upon 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 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 ...

: ''

Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree ''Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree'' is a 1966 animated featurette based on the first two chapters of ''Winnie-the-Pooh'' by A. A. Milne. The film was produced by Walt Disney Productions, and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution on February ...

'' (1966), ''

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day ''Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day'' is a 1968 American animated featurette based on the third, fifth, ninth, and tenth chapters of ''Winnie-the-Pooh'' and the second, eighth, and ninth chapters from ''The House at Pooh Corner'' by A. A. Milne ...

'' (1968), and ''

Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too ''Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too'' is a 1974 animated featurette based on the third chapter of ''Winnie-the-Pooh'' and the fourth and seventh chapters of ''The House at Pooh Corner'' by A. A. Milne. The featurette was directed by John Lounsbery, p ...

'' (1974). Extra material was used to link the three featurettes together to allow the stories to merge into each other. A fourth, shorter scene was added to bring the film to a close, originally made during the production of ''Blustery Day'' (based on the presence of

Jon Walmsley Jon Walmsley is a musician, songwriter, actor and producer. Acting career Walmsley is known for his accomplishments as an actor, most notably a nine-season run as Jason Walton on ''The Waltons''. He also returned for all of the ''Waltons'' re ...

as Christopher Robin). The sequence was based on the final chapter 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 ...

'', where Christopher Robin must leave the Hundred Acre Wood behind as he is starting

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes comp ...

. In it, Christopher Robin and Pooh discuss what they liked doing together and the boy asks his bear to promise to remember him and to keep some of the memories of their time together alive. Pooh agrees to do so, and the film closes with The Narrator saying that wherever Christopher Robin goes, Pooh will always be waiting for him whenever he returns.

Later featurette

Six years after the release of ''The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh'', Disney commissioned a fourth featurette based on the stories. '' Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore'' premiered in theaters on March 11, 1983, but was not originally connected to the preceding films in any manner. It has since been added to home video releases of ''The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.''

Voice cast

Sterling Holloway Sterling Price Holloway Jr. (January 4, 1905 – November 22, 1992) was an American actor and voice actor who appeared in over 100 films and 40 television shows. He did voice acting for The Walt Disney Company, playing Mr. Stork in '' Dumbo'', A ...

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 ...

Bruce Reitherman Bruce Reitherman (born September 15, 1955) is an American filmmaker and former child actor. He voiced Christopher Robin in '' Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree'' and Mowgli in ''The Jungle Book''. Life and work Born in Burbank, California, R ...

and Timothy Turner as Christopher Robin *

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 *

Ralph Wright Ralph Waldo Wright (May 17, 1908 – December 31, 1983) was a Disney animator and story/storyboard writer who provided the gloomy, sullen voice of Eeyore from the popular ''Winnie the Pooh'' franchise. Biography Wright came to the studio in ...

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 ...

Clint Howard Clinton Engle Howard (born April 20, 1959) is an American actor. He is the second son born to American actors Rance and Jean Howard, and younger brother of actor and director Ron Howard. His 200-plus acting credits include feature films such as ...

and Dori Whitaker as Roo *

Barbara Luddy Barbara Luddy (May 25, 1908 – April 1, 1979) was an American actress best known for her voiceover work for Walt Disney Studios in the 1950s and 1970s. Biography Born in Great Falls, Montana, Luddy was the daughter of Will and Molly Luddy of ...

as Kanga *

Paul Winchell Paul Winchell (''né'' Wilchinsky; December 21, 1922 – June 24, 2005) was an American actor, comedian, humanitarian, inventor and ventriloquist whose career flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. From 1950 to 1954, he hosted ''The Paul Winchell S ...

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 ...

Junius Matthews Junius Conyers Matthews (June 12, 1890 – January 18, 1978) was an American actor in films, theater, radio and television. He was the voice of Archimedes the Owl in Disney's ''The Sword in the Stone (1963 film), The Sword in the Stone'' in 196 ...

as Rabbit * Hal Smith as

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 ...

Howard Morris Howard Jerome Morris (September 4, 1919 – May 21, 2005) was an American actor, comedian, and director. He was best known for his role in ''The Andy Griffith Show'' as Ernest T. Bass, and as "Uncle Goopy" in a celebrated comedy sketch on Sid Ca ...

Gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...

* Sebastian Cabot as The Narrator

Production

''The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh'' was the last film in the Disney canon in which

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...

had personal involvement, since one of the shorts (''Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree'') was released during his lifetime and he was involved in the production of ''Blustery Day''. It was always Walt Disney's intention to create a feature film, but he decided to make shorts instead — after production had begun — to familiarize U.S. audiences with the characters. All three shorts, as well as future feature films, boast classic songs by the Sherman Brothers including "

" and "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers". The character Gopher, which does not appear in the Milne stories, was created because Disney wanted an all-American character that could appeal to the children, and also add an element of comedy. For the character Piglet, hand gestures and other movements were used by the animators to create expressiveness, since he (and Pooh) had the appearance of dolls or stuffed animals with relatively simple button eyes. The scene where Rabbit deals with Pooh's rump being part of the "decor of his home" was not in the original book, but was reportedly contemplated by Disney when he first read the book.

Release

Reception

''The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh'' holds a unanimous critic approval rating of on

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 ...

based on reviews, with an average of . The website's critical consensus reads "Perhaps the most faithful of Disney's literary adaptations, this cute, charming collection of episodes captures the spirit of A.A. Milne's classic stories." Film critic Leonard Maltin called the original Pooh featurettes "gems"; he also noted that the artwork resembles the book illustrations and that the particular length of these featurettes meant that the filmmakers didn't have to "compress or protract their script." Ruth Hill Viguers, however, when writing in ''A Critical History of Children’s Literature'' during the 1960s, mentioned Disney's Winnie the Pooh along with several other Disney adaptations as having "destroyed the integrity of the original books". The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: * 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10: ** Nominated Animation Film

Home media

''The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh'' was first released on VHS, Betamax, CED videorecord, and laserdisc in the early 1980s. In 1996, it was re-released on VHS as part of the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection series and included video footage of the making which was shown before the movie starts (as did the first UK VHS release in 1997). It was released on DVD for the first time in 2002 as a 25th Anniversary Edition, with digitally restored picture and sound. The individual shorts had also been released on their own on VHS in the 1990s. The 25th-anniversary edition DVD includes, among other bonus features: "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: The Story Behind the Masterpiece", which documents the history of the books and their initial film adaptations; the short '' Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore'' (1983); and interviews with animators

Ollie Johnston Oliver Martin Johnston Jr. (October 31, 1912 – April 14, 2008) was an American motion picture animator. He was one of Disney's Nine Old Men, and the last surviving at the time of his death from natural causes. He was recognized by The Wal ...

, Frank Thomas, and

Burny Mattinson Burnett "Burny" Mattinson (born May 13, 1935) is an American storyboard artist for Walt Disney Animation Studios, where he has been employed since 1953. Mattinson was honored as an inductee of the Disney Legends program in 2008. Mattinson is off ...

, as well as the Sherman Brothers,

, and others. Digital Media FX reviewer Shannon Muir stated that the audio and video quality of the film on this DVD was very high. The "Friendship Edition" DVD was released on June 19, 2007. All of the special features from the previous "25th Anniversary Edition" DVD were recycled, with the only new addition being an episode of Playhouse Disney's computer-animated series '' My Friends Tigger & Pooh''. The DVD re-release coincides with the 30th anniversary of the release of the film. The Blu-ray version was released for the first time along with the third DVD release on August 27, 2013. The bonus features included a ''Mini Adventures of Winnie the Pooh'' segment, "Geniuses" and the only bonus feature that was kept from the previous DVD releases was the "Winnie the Pooh" theme song music video performed by Carly Simon.

Songs

Notes

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The 1977 films 1977 animated films 1970s American animated films 1970s children's animated films 1970s fantasy films 1970s musical comedy films 1970s English-language films American buddy films American children's animated comedy films American children's animated fantasy films American films with live action and animation American children's animated musical films American comedy-drama films American fantasy comedy-drama films American musical comedy films American musical drama films American animated feature films Animated buddy films Animated films about animals Animated films about friendship Children's comedy-drama films Films scored by Buddy Baker (composer) Films directed by John Lounsbery Films directed by Wolfgang Reitherman Animated anthology films Musicals by the Sherman Brothers Walt Disney Animation Studios films Walt Disney Pictures animated films Winnie-the-Pooh films Winnie the Pooh (franchise) Films adapted into comics Films adapted into television shows 1977 comedy films