Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo

Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo is a 2004 American direct-to-video Easter animated musical adventure comedy-drama film, featuring characters from Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise. It is a very loose adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and normally based on the A.A. Milne stories.
==Plot==
An overexcited Roo, Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Eeyore pay Rabbit a visit to celebrate Easter. But instead of finding an Easter party, they find a Spring Cleaning Day celebration led by Rabbit, who makes up the holiday to replace Easter. While the gang clean up Rabbit's house, Roo finds all their Easter eggs and decorations stored away in Rabbit's closet and throws a surprise Easter party for Rabbit. Unfortunately, he is clearly annoyed and enraged at them for not doing his "Spring Cleaning Day" and sends them out. Roo is sad that Rabbit is unhappy, and Tigger wants Roo to have a happy Easter, so Tigger tries to talk to Rabbit while Roo and the others try to make an Easter celebration of their own in their hopes of cheering up Rabbit.
To convince Rabbit that he still misses Easter and how he used to like it, Rabbit does not believe from hating it so much that Tigger and the Narrator take Rabbit out of the storybook and back in time to last year's Easter celebration. Like the Easter Bunny, Rabbit tried to make everything as organized, orderly, and perfect as possible, treating Easter like a business rather than a great holiday. Tigger and the others wanted to have fun and unique with making and hunting the eggs, but Rabbit was actually shown to be very over-protective on his views of the holiday, claiming, "It isn't fun; it's Easter!" So Tigger and the others swiped all the Easter eggs behind Rabbit's back, and he found them hunting the eggs and celebrating Easter without him. Everyone is happier with Tigger being the "Easter Bunny" instead of Rabbit. Feeling left out of the fun and disappointed that he isn't getting this kind of honor from his friends, he decided to stop the Hundred Acre Wood from having another Easter celebration again, believing that if he couldn't enjoy Easter, no one could. Rabbit finds out Tigger was right about him liking Easter in his past, but instead of agreeing to allow the holiday back, Rabbit then sadly tells Tigger he wants to be left alone, still upset and bitter about his past and accusing Tigger of stealing his role as the Easter Bunny.
Sadly, the present Tigger returns to tell Roo and the others that Easter is still banned while Rabbit returns home in the book. Although Tigger feels that he had let Roo down, the only thing Roo wants is for Rabbit to be happy again, so he and the others try to come up with a plan to do so. Meanwhile, the narrator purposely takes Rabbit to Roo's house instead of his own to show him how much Roo and the others still care about him and how he should do the same thing, but Rabbit remains unconvinced, heads home, and puts all the Easter supplies in a chest, frustrating the narrator. So late that night, the narrator takes Rabbit into the "pages that not have yet been written" or into the future of the Hundred Acre Wood. It is Spring Cleaning Day, and all the supplies and chores are organized exactly as Rabbit wanted. Rabbit is happy about this at first, but he later learns that the Hundred-Acre-Wood is deserted and his friends' houses are empty and abandoned. All his friends had moved away because of his selfishness and bossy arrogant attitude. Rabbit wonders why his friends would leave him. The narrator replies it's because he didn't treat them as friends and shows him how he acted throughout the movie before telling him that all he thought about was what he wanted. Rabbit denies it at first, but finally realizes that he was a jerk to his friends, and he was wrong to try to control and take away something that everyone shares and loves, which drove them all away. Not wanting to be alone for the rest of his life, Rabbit decides to change the future by changing his attitude for everyone. But however, he discovers that the Easter supplies were taken by his friends when they moved, and he screams in terror or fear or horror until he wakes up on Easter day, finding out he still has a chance to change the future.
At the same time, Roo and the others come up with another idea in hopes of cheering Rabbit up, and while they are busy working, Rabbit, feeling as "giddy as a jackrabbit", brings out all the Easter decorations and starts happily preparing a big surprise for his friends. He apologizes to his friends for his behavior and gives everyone their Easter supplies. Roo hands Rabbit his repaired old Easter Bunny hat, to which Rabbit is touched, and allows Tigger to lead the hunt. The movie ends with the annual Easter celebration proceeding as planned.
==Cast==
*Ken Sansom – Rabbit
*Jimmy Bennett – Roo
*Jim Cummings – Winnie the Pooh/Tigger
*John Fiedler – Piglet
*Kath Soucie – Kanga
*Peter Cullen – Eeyore
*David Ogden Stiers – Narrator
==Songs==
*"Winnie the Pooh"
*"The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers"
*"We're Huntin' Eggs Today"
*"Sniffley Sniff"
*"Easter Day With You"
*"The Way It Must Be Done"
*"Easter Day With You" (reprise)
*"The Grandest Easter Ever" (Rabbit's reprise)
*"Easter Day With You" (finale)
==Home video==
The film was released direct-to-DVD and direct-to-VHS on March 9, 2004. It included the theatrical trailer for Pooh's Heffalump Movie and the two episodes from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ("Honey for a Bunny" and "Trap as Trap Can"). The film was later released on Blu-ray on March 11, 2014 (for the 10th anniversary of the film) as the Hippity-Hoppity Roo edition. The film is a part of Disney Movies Anywhere program.
==Trivia==
*Christopher Robin, Owl and Gopher are absent in this film.
**The first of the three characters was mentioned at the opening.
*This is the first film in the Winnie the Pooh franchise where the Narrator has a much more direct impact on the story.
*The story's climax resolves in a direct homage to A Christmas Carol, with the Narrator speaking to Rabbit about his poor behavior and showing him a dark future in which Rabbit lives alone in the Hundred Acre Wood.
**The similarity is noted by Tigger in when he asks Rabbit, "What the Dickens—and I do mean 'Dickens'—is going on here?", during which he turns and winks at the audience (and breaks the fourth wall).
**Like A Christmas Carol, Rabbit takes on the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tigger takes on the role of Jacob Marley, the Narrator uses the book's manipulation to take the roles of the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and Roo takes on the role of Tiny T
****Rabbit stopping Easter because he was not the Easter Bunny in his past is based on how Ebenezer Scrooge's sister dies in Scrooge's past which causes him to start being stingy, selfish, and unkind.
*When Tigger was guessing what word that Rabbit didn't want to say, he said onomatopoeia and explains that it is a word.
*Roo interrupted the beginning just like Tigger in The Tigger Movie and the Narrator references said movie.
*When Tigger was looking for Roo in the stuff to help him look for Easter eggs, a Mickey Mouse Ears Hat can be seen when Roo pops out of the stuff.
*Nikita Hopkins, the voice of Roo, was replaced by Jimmy Bennett for the first time,
*From this movie onward, the running time is about one hour and three-to-five minutes.
*The fourth wall is completely broken in this movie, as the characters speak to the narrator.
*The 2004 original release uses the 1990 Walt Disney Pictures Logo at the start and at the end of the movie.
*The 2014 Blu-Ray edition release uses the 2011 variant of the 2006 Walt Disney Pictures Logo (i.e. with just Disney) at the start and at the end of the movie.
*Despite the film's title with Pooh and Roo on it, Rabbit is actually the main protagonist/antagonist of the film, with Roo as the deuteragonist, Tigger as the tritagonist and Pooh (Alongside Piglet and Eeyore) reduced to minor tritagonists in the film.
*This is the first Disneytoon Studios film to be produced in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. However, many of Disneytoon Studios' previous films before that film were cropped from either 1.33:1 full screen or 1.66:1 widescreen to 1.78:1 widescreen for their remastered Blu-ray or digital printings.
*There was a rumored theatrical screening of this film in 2003 before its official release, although most of the evidence of this is from IMDb.
*This is the only Winnie the Pooh direct-to-video film to include the characters interacting with the book. The bedroom setting is also the same one used in The Tigger Movie. It would later be used in Winnie the Pooh ABCs, Winnie the Pooh 123s, Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie, Winnie the Pooh - Shapes & Sizes, and Winnie the Pooh - Wonderful Word Adventure.
==External links==
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ar:ويني الدبدوب: حفل الربيع مع روو
da:Peter Plys - Forår I Hundredemeterskoven
fr:Les Aventures de Petit Gourou
ja:くまのプーさん/ルーの楽しい春の日
no:Ole Brumm: Vårsprell med Kengubarnet
pl:Maleństwo i przyjaciele
pt-br:Ursinho Pooh: A Páscoa de Guru
Category:2004 films
Category:Disneytoon Studios films
Category:Easter productions
Category:Winnie the Pooh films
Category:A Christmas Carol
Category:Animated films
Category:Direct-to-video films
Category:G-rated films
Category:Disney films
Category:Traditionally Animated Films
Category:2003 films