Reviews

When you watch a horror remake of a beloved children's story, you hope for over-the-top lunacy, or at least so-bad-it's-good. This was neither.

I can buy the basic premise -- after Christopher Robin grows up and leaves 100 Acre Forest and his animal friends behind, they become feral. But then the story loses its internal coherance.

The story jumps ahead five years as first Christopher Robin and his fiance, and later a group of sorrority sistes, visit 100 Acre Forest. I will hide this behind a Spoiler warning, but it's not much of a spoiler in a horror/slasher movie to know that not all of them will come out of this alive.

Christopher Robin is immensely unlikable, standing by, not helpless to be sure, but simply watching PIglet choke the life out of his fiance while feebly protesting, "Why are you doing this?" Pooh and Piglet then drag Robins away for some torture.

The sorority sisters are visiting an vacation rental in 100 Acre Forest to help one of them recover from a sexual assault. Except for this one backstory and the only blonde of the bunch who is a social media influencer, the rest of the sistes are indistinguishable.

After the SA survivor tells her story, the influencer decides it is the right time to use the hot tub, late at night by herself. She snaps some selfies with a cell phone that is labeled "Natasha" (the character's name is Lara; the ACTRESS is Natasha) and looks through the photos, and sees Pooh peering around the corner of the house. Not thinking anything of it, she continues preening until she is abducted by Pooh and Piglet. They hog-tie her and leave her in the driveway until Pooh runs over her head with a car. Which creates several questions -- when did Pooh learn how to drive? Why kill her in such a gruesome fashion when they could have just ripper her head off and eaten her? Where did Pooh find overalls and a lumberjack shirt to fit his above-average frame?

Later, the remaining sisters find a battered but still alive Robins strung up in Pooh's hideaway and release him. This is the last we see of Robins until the climatic ending of the movie, another 40 minutes later.

The sisters find a battered woman tied between two beams in another room of Pooh's house, and before releasing her, make her tell them her story (which didn't explain who she is or how she ended up here). After the movie, I turned to they guy next to me, and neither of us could figure it out.

By this point, several people had already walked out of the theater.

The SA survivor had begun to carry a gun for protection, but apparently loaded only one bullet.

The third act begins when the remaining girls run out onto the dirt road and flag down a passing car with four locals, one of whom runs the dilapidated general store at the edge of the forest. "You've got to help us, please, there is something after us!" pant the girls. "Whoa, whoa, slow down, you're not making any sense," reply the locals, as if the monsters have been living in their forest for five years with no one the wiser.

Ultimately, the only thing that makes this a Winnie the Pooh movie and not a psycho furry movie, is that Pooh is often seen with honey dripping down his snout, which begs the question, where is he getting the honey from?

There are other flaws with the movie, but I will stop here.

The closing credits promise that "Winnie the Poo will return." As much as I enjoy really bad cheesy movies, I am not sure that I will.

I have to acknowlege that my experience may be biased due to the attorcious behavior of other patrons. One dude two rows ahead of me, wearing his Pooh outfit, was on his phone for much of the film. The couple next to me were not-quite-whispering through the whole movie. I don't know if streaming has created an environment where proper theater etiquette is a lost art, but this was as bad as a theater experience as I have had in a long time.

The first half of the documentary was good (7 out of 10 stars), a retrospective of Marilyn Monroe's life and career. Good, but nothing new that is not covered in any one of the many other documentaries.

The second half of the documentary focuses on the circumstances of her death and the aftermath, as the director interviews several people close to Marilyn at the time. I was left wondering how he would have telephone interviews with these people, and yet have video recordings of their end of the conversation.

The director went to great pains to build a case against the Kennedy's for both her death and cover-up. Ultimately, he crashes his own theory, so, what was the point? 3 out of 10 for the second half for an average of 5.