The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a 1977 American animated anthology film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution. This is the 22nd animated feature in the Disney Animated Canon. It is based upon the children's stories about the titular bear written by A.A. Milne, as well as the final chapter of the second story, .
The film is actually composed of material from three previously released animated shorts:
*Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966)
*Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968)
*Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974)
The film and its characters have spawned an industry of sequels, television programs, clothing, books, and toys.
The film also inspired an attraction of the same name at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. A much more elaborate attraction, also based on the film, opened in Tokyo Disneyland as "Pooh's Hunny Hunt".
==Synopsis==
The film's content comes largely from the three previously released animated featurettes Disney produced based upon the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too! (1974). Extra material with Holloway and Cabot reprising their roles used to link the three featurettes together was added to allow the stories to flow into each other.
A fourth, shorter featurette, which was added to end the film, was based on the final chapter of , in which Christopher Robin (Jon Walmsley) has to leave the Hundred Acre Wood behind as he is starting school. In it, he and Pooh discuss what they liked doing together and he asks Pooh to promise to remember him and to keep some of the memories of their time together alive. He agrees, and the film closes with The Narrator saying that wherever Christopher Robin goes, Pooh will always be waiting for him whenever he returns.
==Voice cast==
Character 	Segment 	Segment 	Segment
Character 	The Honey Tree 	The Blustery Day 	Tigger Too
Winnie the Pooh 	Sterling Holloway 	Sterling Holloway	Sterling Holloway
Christopher Robin	Bruce Reitherman (original recordings, singing only)Jon Walmsley (re-recordings, speaking)	Jon Walmsley 	Timothy Turner
Piglet 	cameo 	John Fiedler 	John Fiedler
Tigger 	cameo as a stuffed toy 	Paul Winchell 	Paul Winchell
Rabbit 	Junius Matthews 	Junius Matthews 	Junius Matthews
Eeyore 	Ralph Wright 	Ralph Wright 	cameo
Roo 	Clint Howard 	Clint Howard 	Dori Whitaker
Kanga 	Barbara Luddy 	Barbara Luddy 	Barbara Luddy
Owl 	Hal Smith 	Hal Smith 	cameo
Gopher 	Howard Morris 	Howard Morris 	absent
Narrator 	Sebastian Cabot 	Sebastian Cabot 	Sebastian Cabot
===Uncredited===
*Thurl Ravenscroft - Singer (segment "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree" and "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day") & Black Honeypot
*The Mellomen - Singers (segment "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day")
==Production==
The film is the last one in the Disney canon in which Walt Disney had personal involvement, since one of the shorts (Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree) was released during his lifetime, and he was involved in the production of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. The theatrical rights to the Pooh stories were acquired by Disney in 1961 and the original intent was to produce a feature film, but Walt decided to make shorts instead — after production had begun — since he thought the source material was not strong enough to adapt well into a full-length film. All three shorts as well as future feature films boast classic songs by the Sherman Brothers including "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers".
For Piglet, hand gestures and other movements were used by the animators to create expressiveness, since he (and Pooh) had the appearance of dolls or stuffed animals with relatively simple button eyes. The scene where Rabbit deals with Pooh's being part of the "decor of his home" was not in the original book, but was reportedly contemplated by Disney when he first read the book.
==Release==
===Reception===
Film critic Leonard Maltin called the original Pooh featurettes "gems"; he also noted that the artwork resembles the book illustrations, and that the particular length of these featurettes meant that the filmmakers didn't have to "compress or protract their script." The film holds a 92% "fresh" rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Surprisingly, its financial records aren't known at all.
Ruth Hill Viguers, however, when writing in A Critical History of Children’s Literature during the 1960s, mentioned Disney’s Winnie the Pooh along with several other Disney adaptations as having "destroyed the integrity of the original books".
The nominated the film for its Top 10 Animated Films list.
===Home video===
The film was first released on VHS, Betamax, CED video record, and laserdisc in the early 1980s. In 1996, it was re-released on VHS as part of the Masterpiece Collection and included video footage of the making which was shown before it starts. It was released on DVD for the first time in 2002 as a 25th Anniversary Edition, with digitally restored picture and sound. The individual shorts had also been released on their own on VHS in the 1990s.
The 25th anniversary edition DVD includes, among other bonus features, "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: The Story Behind the Masterpiece", which documents the history of the books and their initial film adaptations. It also features interviews with animators Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, and Burny Mattinson, as well as the Sherman Brothers, Paul Winchell, and others. Digital Media FX reviewer Shannon Muir stated that the audio and video quality of the film on this DVD was very high.
The "Friendship Edition" DVD was re-released on June 19, 2007. All of the special features from the previous "25th Anniversary Edition" DVD were recycled; the only new addition being an episode of Playhouse Disney's computer-animated series My Friends Tigger & Pooh. The DVD re-release coincides with the 30th anniversary of the release of the film.
The Blu-ray version was released on August 27, 2013 along with the third DVD release and includes the current voice actors. The bonus features included a Mini Adventures of Winnie the Pooh segment, "Geniuses" and the only bonus feature that was kept from the previous DVD releases was the "Winnie the Pooh" theme song music video performed by Carly Simon.
Winnie the Pooh Storybook Classics was released on VHS worldwide in 1994. The featurettes include, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (February 4, 1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (December 20, 1968), Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too! (December 20, 1974) and Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore (March 11, 1983). This was last released in 2000.
===Video games===
Elements of the three featurettes along with the Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore featurette and The Tigger Movie were incorporated into the video game Winnie the Pooh: Adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood as a part of the gameplay for the video game.
==Music==
*"Winnie the Pooh"
*"Up, Down, Touch the Ground"
*"Rumbly in My Tumbly"
*"Little Black Rain Cloud"
*"Mind Over Matter"
*"Rumbly in My Tumbly" (reprise)
*"A Rather Blustery Day"
*"The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers"
*"Heffalumps and Woozles"
*"The Rain, Rain, Rain Came Down, Down, Down"
*"Hip-Hip-Hooray!"
*"The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" (reprise)
*"The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" (final version)
==Videos==
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - 1996 VHS Trailer|1996 Home Video Trailer
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - 2002 "25th Anniversary Edition" DVD-VHS Trailer|2002 Special Edition Trailer (25th Anniversary)
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - 2007 Friendship Edition DVD Trailer|2007 Friendship Edition Trailer
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - 2013 Blu-ray Trailer|2013 Blu-ray Trailer
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*A copyright renewal for the film was registered on October 5, 2004.Online Copyright Catalog search (form autofilled, pressing "begin search" brings up the entry)
*This marks the second to last appearance of actor Ralph Wright. He would return one more time as the voice of Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore, released 6 years later.
*Along with The Rescuers, this is the first time since 1940 that Disney released two animated features in the same year.
*The film marks the first presented in a feature film and final appearance of actors Junius Matthews (Rabbit), Barbara Luddy (Kanga), Sterling Holloway (Winnie the Pooh), and Sebastian Cabot (The Narrator).
**Junius died of natural causes in 1978, Barbara died of lung cancer in 1979, Ralph died of a heart attack in 1983, Sterling later retired but died in 1992 of cardiac arrest, and Sebastian died of a stroke five months after the film was released.
*The film was the first in the main Disney canon to be a package film since The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, also being the last.
*The film is the last one to technically have any involvement from Walt Disney, as he was involved in production of Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. It opens with "Walt Disney Presents" as opposed to "Walt Disney Productions" as most Disney films in the 1970s had.
*Thus being a package film, Christopher Robin would be voiced by three different actors (one from each short, and the latter voicing him in the additional Final Chapter sequence). 
**Roo would also be voiced by two actors, one of them being a girl.
*The Dutch dub from 1997 uses the alternate 1983 opening score and theme from Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore, as a result of the aforementioned short being dubbed first in 1993, followed by the other shorts (which also use the same alternate theme music) being dubbed in 1995. (Prior to this, all four short films were originally dubbed into Dutch in 1986 for TV, which use the original 1966 theme.)
*Because of the negative criticisms from the British with the first packaged short Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, the version of the short that includes British child actor Jon Walmsley’s recordings of Christopher Robin was used for the film instead of the original version where Robin was voiced by American child actor Bruce Reithermen, though Reithermen’s original singing recordings were kept in. 
==Sequel==
Walt Disney Pictures released a sequel, simply called Winnie the Pooh, on April 15, 2011 in the United Kingdom, and on July 15 of the same year in the United States.
==See also==
*Disney Movies Anywhere
==References==
==External links==
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ar:مغامرات ويني الدبدوب
da:Peter Plys
es:The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
fi:Nalle Puh (elokuva)
fr:Les Aventures de Winnie l'Ourson (film)
it:Le avventure di Winnie the Pooh
no:Filmen om Ole Brumm
pl:Przygody Kubusia Puchatka
pt-br:As Muitas Aventuras do Ursinho Pooh
ru:Приключения Винни
zh:小熊维尼歷險記
Category:Disney animated features canon
Category:Traditionally Animated Films
Category:Animated films
Category:1977 films
Category:Winnie the Pooh films
Category:Films based on books
Category:G-rated films
Category:Anthology films
Category:The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Category:Disney films