Thursday , March 28 2024
He is the only one... and now he's on Blu-ray too.

Blu-ray Review: The Tigger Movie

Editors Note:  For a full review of The Tigger Movie itself see this article.

For the characters in the Hundred Acre Wood things are not always easy, things ought to be, but the foolish creatures have a habit of complicating them.  Of course, they have a habit of taking complicated things and making them easy, too (but not always in smart ways).

Today’s case in point is The Tigger Movie.  This T-I-double guh-rrrrr-centered film focuses on the one and only Tigger who is upset because he is just that – the one and only Tigger.  That is right, The Tigger Movie features the kind of, sort of, almost lovable guy (it really depends on if you’re Rabbit or not) on a quest to find his family.

He is helped on this journey by his Hundred Acre Wood family, a family which our hero eventually works out is just as good a family as he could possibly want.   They need not look like him nor act like him, but they are his family because they are the ones who are always there for him and (as they’ve proven here) would do anything for him. 

It actually could be kind of weighty material for a Pooh story, but it’s handled with enough levity and Pooh-filled naïveté that it works.  Some of the material present—as stated in the DVD review of the 10th anniversary edition—does feel a little old, but depending on where you stand that may be an advantage.

One of the nice things about the Pooh characters is that they are so child-like  that they can do the same things repeatedly and never quite remember that they’ve been down the road before.  It doesn’t matter how many times the bees chase Pooh, the bear is going to go for the honey.  It doesn’t matter how many times Rabbit expresses his displeasure at being bounced, Tigger is going to bounce him.  And, if it’s done the right way (and more often than not The Tigger Movie is), it isn’t going to matter to the audience that it’s happened before – it remains amusing.  If Dennis the Menace could keep frustrating Mr. Wilson, there seems to be no reason that Eeyore’s home can’t be destroyed every five minutes.

That all being said, given the choice, I would regularly choose to watch The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh or Winnie the Pooh (the recent franchise reboot) over The Tigger Movie.  I think both those movies gel in slightly better fashion than this one.   Why?  Well, because to me, while Tigger can (and should) have a story in Pooh tales, Tigger stories are probably better relegated to a B-plot or shorter piece rather than the A-plot of a full-length feature.

As for this particular release, I am not sure that it is all that much better than the 10 year anniversary DVD.  Certainly in terms of special features it is not.  Beyond the games and music video and sing-along that the DVD had (the latter two are available here), it also comes with a digital copy which the Blu-ray lacks.  Further, the 10 year edition has a couple of episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh while here we get some Pooh shorts which seem to be little more than repackaged bits of Pooh movies (like this one).  There is also a DVD present on this release as well as a very short behind the scenes piece about the making of the movie. 

If, however, special features aren’t your thing and you’re solely concerned with the look and feel of the movie – the Blu-ray may be the way to go.  It looks very good – the colors are bright and rich, the backgrounds better than one might expect, and the details fun.  There are no true visual problems of which to speak  The same is true for the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack.  The Hundred Acre Wood proves to be a lively little wood (or big wood), with the various channels all contributing to make it so.  The music, which is not Disney’s best (but nowhere near their worst), sounds very full as well.  It is, in short, a very good transfer.

So, should you buy it?  Not if you want a digital copy and more stories (the animated series is far superior to the repackaged bits).  You should see if you can’t find the 10 year DVD edition in that case. Perhaps though that’s a tall order or you care more about the look of the main movie.  Well, then you’re going to like what you get here, but it is still probably better to fill this in after you already have Winnie the Pooh on Blu-ray (The Many Adventures not yet being available).  There is certainly nothing wrong with The Tigger Movie, it just isn’t as great as those two.

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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