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'Goodbye Christopher Robin' reveals bleak back story of Winnie-the-Pooh

<b>"Goodbye Christopher Robin" - ★ ★ ½</b>

Dark revelations about the origins of pop culture icons must be hot this month.

Last week, "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women" regaled us with the kinky, fetish-oriented beginnings of popular DC Comics superheroine Wonder Woman.

This week, Simon Curtis' beautifully photographed "Goodbye Christopher Robin" reveals the bleak, unhappy back story of the lad who became world-famous as Winnie-the-Pooh's pal.

"Goodbye" proves to be an aggressive tear-jerker, a manipulative and overwrought biopic that bounces like a bipolar Tigger between an upbeat account of divine literary inspiration and a downer domestic drama that could be subtitled "Mommy and Daddy Dearest."

Curtis and screenwriters Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Simon Vaughan can't quite agree on who should be the main character: Winnie-the-Pooh writer A.A. Milne (Domhnall Gleeson, playing the character as stiff as his British upper lip) or his little cherubic son Christopher Robin (an adorably puffy-cheeked Will Tilston, and later played as a darkly tormented teen by Alex Lawther).

This cautionary tale about the pitfalls of self-indulgent parenting begins with a middled-aged Milne receiving an ominous military telegram during World War II. What could it be?

Milne remembers the terrible death and destruction he witnessed as a soldier in the French trenches of World War I. The experience propelled him into bouts of PTSD, pushing him to become an anti-war activist.

Soon after the war, Milne returns to his lush English estate nestled in its own idyllic 100-acre wood (Ben Smithard's cinematography imbues every frame with glowing, ethereal artifice).

Milne attempts to reconnect with his materialistic wife Daphne (Margot Robbie, gorgeous, but disappointingly tepid) and his son.

Party girl Daphne happily dumps little Christopher, whom she calls "Billy Moon," with a Scottish nanny (Kelly Macdonald) infinitely more sacrificing and devoted to the boy than either of his parents.

In the movie's most touching sequence, the writer and son are panicked to be left alone with each for three days. They slowly bond by creating characters with names such as Tigger, Winnie and Piglet.

Inspired, Milne writes the Winnie-the-Pooh best-sellers and uses his son's name for the boy in his books, a decision soon vehemently resented by Billy Moon.

His childhood becomes crammed with interviews, photo ops, travel schedules and product endorsements as his parents willingly exploit him to augment the books' worldwide success.

Curtis, director of Eddie Redmayne's breakout film "My Week With Marilyn," cautiously avoids painting the parents as villains, no doubt why he spends so much time humanizing Milne at the beginning. Daphne doesn't rate the same treatment.

Carter Burwell's molasses-sweet score provides "Goodbye Christopher Robin" with extra, unnecessary sentiment as this story contains more than enough, especially when the middle-aged Milne looks upon his adult son, but sees instead his cherubic little boy smiling back with deep dimples framing his mouth like parentheses.

Once would have been a knockout moment.

But Curtis employs this device two more times, proverbially pulling the picture's most potent punch.

<b>Starring:</b> Domhnall Gleeson, Will Tilston, Margot Robbie, Kelly Macdonald, Alex Lawther

<b>Directed by:</b> Simon Curtis

<b>Other:</b> A Fox Searchlight Pictures release. Rated PG. 119 minutes

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