My Friends Tigger & Pooh is better for the addition of a female character--one that's updated for the 2000s.
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When Disney bumped Christopher Robin from its 2007 3-D animated Winnie the Pooh Playhouse Disney show for preschoolers, there was such a commotion that you'd have thought they'd just killed Cock Robin. Besides, Christopher isn't dead. He puts in an occasional appearance, but the main human to interact with Pooh, Tigger, and the rest of the Hundred Acre Wood gang is now a six-year-old girl named Darby (Chloe Moretz). And Darby has a pooch named Buster (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker).
And while A. A. Milne purists were all but chaining themselves to the trees and saying things like "there goes the neighborhood," it turns out that whoever dreamed up this replacement surgery was right on the money.
In this fast-moving world of hand-held game images and quick-paced TV cartoons, the kinder, gentler, and slower moving "Winnie the Pooh" tales have started to appeal more to girls than boys. So why not give them a character they can identify with?
Darby seems a little more self-aware and savvy than Christopher, who always came across like a bit of a nerd. In other words, she holds her own with the charismatic Pooh (Jim Cummings), the bombastic Tigger (Cummings again), the paranoid Piglet (Travis Oates), the glass-half-empty Eeyore (Peter Cullen), and the curmudgeonly Rabbit (Ken Sansom). So in terms of character, the shake-up provided a nice infusion of new blood while keeping many of the familiar voice talents from previous "Winnie the Pooh" films.
It's also improved in terms of structure. Kids love structure and repetition at this age, and there was always something a little meandering about the Pooh adventures. In this series, every episode revolves around a mystery, with the group of "Super Sleuths" called upon to pool their talents in order to solve the mystery. Typical of shows for preschoolers these days, kids at home are asked to help the sleuths by correctly answering questions. The themes are right on the money, because each episode touches on either a secret wish or fear that youngsters share.
Three episodes from the TV show are included here:
1) "Super-Sized Darby" and "Piglet's Lightning Frightening"
2) "Eeyore's Trip to the Moon" and "The Incredible Shrinking Roo"
3) "Eeyore's Home Sweet Home" and "Rabbit's Prized Pumpkin"
In "Super-Sized Darby," Rabbit's latest invention (Insta-Go-Grow) doesn't seem to work on his beloved garden plants, but it sure has an effect on Darby, who becomes as gigantic as Alice in Wonderland. Being big has its advantages, she thinks at first, but Darby quickly discovers that she'd rather be herself. And the mystery for the gang is how to go about reversing the "spell."
In "Piglet's Lightning Frightening," the poor little guy is afraid of storms, so what do his friends do? Devise a "Flashidy Freeze" game to help him lose his fears. The lesson here is that while storms can in fact cause harm if you're outside, once you make the right choice and move indoors, all that noise and flashing can't hurt you.
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