Goodbye Christopher Robin: Film Review

Goodbye Christopher Robin: Film Review

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Kelly MacDonald, Will Tilston
Director: Simon Curtis

Very much a warts and all portrayal of one of the world's most famous children's icons, Goodbye Christopher Robin is a cautionary tale about the damage done to others by fame and neglect.

With a strong anti-war message, Goodbye Christopher Robin is the story of the playwright A A Milne (Gleeson, sombre and at times, drawn) whose London arty life is irrevocably changed when he returns from the first Great War.

Shell-shocked and sleep-walking through life, Milne, along with his flapper wife Daphne (Robbie in chocks away mode) relocate to the English countryside after their first child is born.

Milne believes the countryside will inspire his anti-war writing, but Daphne, disappointed at birthing a boy rather than a girl and fearing he will be conscripted, stays in London to party and forget the perils.

Left alone with Christopher Robin and forced to take on the kid when nanny Olive (Macdonald, the film's heart and vocal conscience) has to look after her ill mother, the pair bond as young Christopher helps him through post-war life and yearns for a father.

As the duo spend more time together, the whimsical world of Winnie The Pooh is born - and despite AA Milne saying the story would be for his son, it soon becomes a worldwide phenomenon, leading to an even stronger sense of estrangement in the Milne family.

Served with a large degree of as much sugariness as Pooh's beloved honey, Goodbye Christopher Robin comes dangerously close to over-egging the pudding at times, with the mawkish manipulation being piled on to occasionally over-bearing moments.

With the saccharine overdose being largely confined to the dimple-faced moppet playing young Christopher Robin and his fatherly interactions, there's little insight into what fully led to the bear's creation other than some downpat broad brush strokes applied to the stiffly-starched English accents and rather withdrawn adult acting.

And yet, bizarrely and equally so, the sense of detachment and the underlying sadness of lives wrecked within (Milne's PTSD haunts him at every turn, wife Daphne's denial pushes her to seek solace in London away from the boy she could lose and son Christopher's growing resentment over the fame he's handed and the lack of familial attachment) really hint at the dark story underneath it all.

This is perhaps Goodbye Christopher Robin's strength - it's not a film that celebrates an icon in many ways.

If anything, it shows a deeply tragic personal correlation between fame and its cost.

Pre-reality shows and post war with England aching for a return to more optimistic times, this is a harrowing introspective look at the trappings and perils of the creative world.

It puts a uniquely human spin (albeit occasionally laden with a spoon rather than a dollop) on proceedings and deserves to be saluted so.

Perhaps if some of the sentiment hadn't been ladelled on with such heft, this immensely thoughtful biopic could have been intensely more emotionally satisfying.