'Pooh' still a honey of a tale

Walt Disney didn't mess it up!

No computer-animated Piglet. No 3-D Hundred Acre Wood. No rap songs for Christopher Robin to sing.

A.A. Milne's beloved literary creation Winnie the Pooh returns to the silver screen as a 2-D, water-color-inspired animated comedy with new songs sung by a zesty Zooey Deschanel and a splendiferous voice cast that pays homage to the performers who brought the same characters to life a generation ago.

As the lovable Pooh, Jim Cummings, as he has in earlier projects, suggests the raspy delivery of the great Sterling Holloway from Disney's 1977 feature "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh."

Bucky Luckey voices Eeyore the donkey with the same deep, downer resonance that Ralph Wright brought to the character 34 years ago.

Pooh and Eeyore join other denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood - Piglet, Owl, Kanga, Roo and Rabbit - in a whimsical, vignette-based plot distilled from three Milne stories.

Once again, Winnie is in hot pursuit of a honey jar while everyone around him trembles in fear over a monstrous creature called the Backson!

This happens because of a misreading of Christopher Robin's note indicating he will be "back soon." The animals think he's been taken by the "Backson" and they might be next.

The gang gets involved in all sorts of trouble, especially when they fall into a pit they built to catch the creature. (Everyone seems oblivious to the fact that Owl can fly right out and get help.)

Eeyore loses his tacky tail, and that spurs a massive search for a suitable replacement, everything from a cuckoo clock to a stick.

"Winnie the Pooh," directed by Stephen Anderson and Don Hall, plays around with words and images with gleeful imagination and fun.

The characters often bump into the printed words on the page as they're being narrated by Monty Python member John Cleese, a more than suitable replacement for voice-over master Sebastian Cabot.

The animals jump over some words, brave paragraphs and dodge phrases in amusing sequences punctuated with songs such as "Everything is Honey" and "The Backson Song."

Weirdly enough, the characters' inability to correctly spell words has lost some of its cutesy appeal in 2011.

Now, the running gags based on the animals' phonetic spellings come dangerously close to celebrating subliteracy, hardly what Milne intended when he created the "Pooh" library.

This "Winnie the Pooh" has a running time of 69 minutes. I counted about 12 minutes of closing credits, and I'm not sure if the remaining running time of 57 minutes includes the cartoon short at the beginning of the movie or not.

No matter. If this "Pooh" comes up short, it's only on the clock.

<b>“Winnie the Pooh”</b>

★ ★ ★

Starring: John Cleese, Jim Cummings, Craig Ferguson, Travis OatesDirected by: Stephen Anderson and Don Hall

Other: A Walt Disney release. Rated G. 69 minutes