Rent Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)

Uneven - Goodbye Christopher Robin review by JR

The film tells the sad story of the real Christoper Robin. AA Milne was a distant and unpredictable father due to what we now know as post traumatic stress disorder having survived the first world war. Christopher Robin's mother is able to turn on the charm for short periods but has no real interest in her child other than to use him to gain fame and fortune.

This dark portrayal of this highly dysfunctional, if not abusive family, sits uncomfortably against the idealised, upper class idyll of heritage drama; the seemingly endless summer of sunshine dappled woods and peaceful Sussex countyside, lovely houses and interiors and pretty dresses.

The young boy who plays Christopher Robin is outstanding and is completely convincing unlike Gleeson and the miscast Robbie, who play his parents.

Interesting and sad - Goodbye Christopher Robin review by AL

Knew nothing about this film before watching. Found it to be fascinating and sad. Very good acting. Well worth watching.

Throughly enjoyed it - Goodbye Christopher Robin review by rm

I found this film very moving and interesting. I have loved the Pooh books all my life, and although I knew something about the tortured relationship between AA Milne and his son, the film encouraged me to find out more.

In general, I thought it was very well acted and very powerful. However, the mother figure was not entirely convincing. In real life, she was not a raving beauty. There is much more to tell about the story, as the film skims over much of it. For example Christopher did not speak to his parents after the war, except to communicate by letter. After his father died, he did not speak to his mother for the rest of her life... 15 years. He accused his parents of being cold and said his father did not like children. It's a very sad story and photos of him as a child show a lonely sad figure.

I would really recommend this film, i found it very powerful.

Going to the woods with AA Milne was not as much fun as you imagine… - Goodbye Christopher Robin review by Strovey

Right from the opening scenes the director makes it obvious this is more than just a story of how the characters of Winnie the Pooh were created. It is not a feel-good story. It seemed to me to be how much of a hole a great and terrible war can leave inside a person. Domhall Gleeson plays AA Milne with the such unsmiling, frowning, sombreness that you can’t help feeling the war had absolutely nothing to do with his lack of emotion or response to anything other than being ‘proper’ and ‘correct’. We are only lead to the conclusion that is was the war by a brief battle-scene and the flinching and ticks he displays at noises. I started off feeling sorry for him due to this setup but less than halfway through I started to think he was just an unloving, stiff-upper-lip git. I’m not sure Gleason or the director wanted this.

Disappointingly the makers decided that the ‘baddie’, (every film has to have one), would be Christopher Robin’s mother. A harpy interested only in having the right type of husband and family, who had a child to please her husband and treats ‘lesser’ people like slightly intelligent stock. Was she really this way? Even some of the worst types of these people, believe me, they still exist, are not as two dimensional and cartoonish. Margot Robbie does well as she can with the role but her odd cut-glass accent definitely slips back to Australia a few times during the run.

No doubt Gleason and Robbie are fine actors but in truth, they were blasted off the picture by the amazing acting of ‘small’ child actor Will Tilston who just seems to be natural and unaffected by the whole process. Right from the get-go, I believed he was a small boy going through these circumstances, amazing. He is ably backed up by the ever-reliable Kelly MacDonald whose character is clearly the surrogate audience and voice of conscience. As usual, she does well with a character who most film-goers would start to lose patience with and begin to yell ‘Tell them to stick it…’

The settings are pastoral green and do a good job of sending us back to the oft-imagined and over-exaggerated green and pleasant land that so many seem to dream of and believe in nowadays. Whether it was as idyllic as this is a moot point but certainly the real Christopher Robin remembered it with real love and affection so a portrayal of the scenery in this way suits the narrative.

The film builds us up to a difficult and spiky relationship between the main four characters and then pulls all this back to end with the sentimental tear-jerking that people expect from a Winnie-the-Pooh based tale.

All in the all the film as a story on its own is good and the acting, with a few wobbles, is top class. Unfortunately, once again, it is a ‘true story’ where the actual truth and the story are only nodding acquaintances. Christopher Robin loved being Christopher Robin until he went to school and really started to dislike the fame when he was in his twenties and so each layer has a grain of truth to it but seems to have been altered, shortened or moved for the benefit of running time or my personal bug-bear to give the audience ‘a focus’ etc.

Goodbye Christopher Robin is a film I enjoyed watching and I’m glad I watched it. I doubt I’ll watch it again and it did make me research the truth but I do get frustrated with mangling of history when the true stories are as interesting as what is finally put out into the cinema. I’ll never understand it no matter how much film-makers try to justify it.

Charming/ dramatic back story to much loved children's stories - Goodbye Christopher Robin review by IanF

I was aware of the lovely Winnie - the - Pooh poems and stories. The moving story was a surprise, but not a bad one. The stories proved an incredibly popular antidote to WW1 trauma, but are still a world worth visiting today. A lovely film!

We loved it - Goodbye Christopher Robin review by AB

What a story really enjoyed this film .. I wasn't really looking forward to watching it but once on got hooked into it .. Worth the watch !

None of this film rings true - Goodbye Christopher Robin review by JK

I couldn't get to grips with what period of the 1920's/30's this film was supposed to be set in. The story was chronologically in the 1920's but all the (gorgeous) Art Deco furniture looked much more 1930's. My understanding had been that Milne was an 'older' father - certainly late 30's early 40's but the actor looked much younger - as did his wife. This lead me to believe that the whole thing had been 'Hollywood-ised' for the American market. Older man, plain wife and drab furniture do not a stylised, 'English' film make in the eyes of producers, keen to maximise on the cute kid, the doleful bear (not wearing a red vest) and their perception of Upper Class Gentry.

Unfortunately, this overshadowed what could have been a poignant and tragic story about a mother's rejection of her child due to having had a difficult birth, a traumatised father suffering from PTSD; - (read his poem entitled The Doormouse and The Doctor if you want to know the depths to which his depression sank) - and the country-wide craving for sanitised 'normality' following a horrific war.

Only towards the end did I start to feel I could cut through the sentimental schmaltz and begin to get the genuine emotion of the film.