Trailer Fix: Winnie the Pooh

Released yesterday, the trailer for Disney’s 2011 adaptation of Winnie the Pooh is awesome.

There are so many wonderful things going on in this trailer, it is overwhelming. The simple character introductions of Pooh, Owl, Eeyore, and Tigger! The 2D animation! The reminder that Winnie the Pooh was a book first! The use of Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know”! It is a clever marketing ploy on the part of Disney to evoke nostalgia among those older filmgoers, like myself, who grew up on the original 1977 Winnie the Pooh movie.

The recent Winnie the Pooh movies that used new animation techniques and focused on Tigger and Piglet were poorly received. This upcoming adaptation revolves mostly around Pooh and the whole Hundred Acres Wood gang. It is such a great move on the part of the creative team (which includes exceutive producer John Lasseter) to return Winnie the Pooh to its original form.

After all, Winnie the Pooh is a simple yet deep children’s story with such a lasting legacy and dedicated following (somewhere in my house is an original A.A. Milne book, courtesy of my grandmother, that I used to read as a child) that only the simplest form of animation suits it.