Goodbye Christopher Robin

Goodbye Christopher Robin touched me personally and helped me to remember what life is really about. It touches on the trauma that can affect those closest to us. It shows how hard and long those times can affect our lives and those around us. The casting and acting was spot on for me. I could relate to the characters and could relate to their situation.

It reminded me in some ways of "Finding Mr Banks", but touched me more deeply. There are movies you go to watch to escape the real world. This was a movie that helped me to remember what is important in this world and feel better for it.

It was touching, heart breaking and had times that all parents can relate to. In the end it showed me how important it is to spend time with your children.

It is a movie I will be adding to my collection.

REVIEW - GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN

Honestly didn't know what to expect when I went to see this film. As its based (loosely) around the creation of the Winnie The Poo stories I thought it was going to be a children's film but.......

The film itself is actually and surprising very good, touching on the family dynamic of the upper classes during the 1930s to 1940s.

Very stand offish parents who seem to care about their social standing rather than their son (Christopher Robin) and how this impacts on all of their lives.

Looking at how one person can force the hand of another, in this case forcing father and son to actually spend time together and bond.

Lessons can be learnt from this film, no matter how much you work, your children want you.

Thoroughly enjoyable film on many levels.

Rating 10 out of 10

This a lovely film focusing on the relationship between A.A Milne and his son, Christopher Robin and how together they became sucked into the world of Winnie the Pooh.

With good performances from all this is a wonderful film, all about lost innocence and the importance of family. We are left with the question about whether Milne really did his son too many favours by placing him in a children's book after all.

Special mention must go to Will Tilston, who plays the young Christopher Robin so beautifully.

I hope this film goes onto wider acclaim, because I thought it was marvellous.

While not entirely perfect, this film is one that I will definitely watch again.

It had strange resonances for me personally, as my grandmother was a famous and celebrated author, who used me as inspiration for several of her children's books, and also as a subject for one of her academic books for adults.

During my early childhood, I spent many happy days playing imaginative games with my grandmother - always followed around by a photographer - and those games became the basis for her stories, with the photographs of me used to illustrate them. At the time I was quite happy about this, as it made me feel special, but I am now very well aware that I was being exploited.

Like Christopher Robin, I was never asked permission to be in her books, nor was I ever paid (although I inherited a modest amount of money when she died, so I suppose that could be considered payment of sorts).

Unlike Christopher Robin, I never resented the books I was in, and I never felt that my childhood memories had been stolen or commercialised. But my situation was never as drastic as his, and my grandmother's celebrity didn't even come close to that of A.A. Milne. However, there are enough parallels to have given me a few shivers while watching this movie.

Others have commented on its excellence, so I won't belabour that point, except to say that I agree. As a film it is beautifully crafted and (for me anyway) endlessly re-watchable.

I disagree with the negative comments about the stilted acting. If anything I felt they needed to be more stilted to be properly true to the period. I do agree that Margo Robbie's accent was uneven, but performance-wise I felt she did very well in what was perhaps the hardest role to perform convincingly.

As others have mentioned, the best performances came from the two boys playing Christopher Robin, although I also particularly liked Stephen Campbell Moore's understated warmth, and - for the first time in her career- I actually found myself liking Kelly Macdonald, an actress who has irritated me in every other film in which I've seen her. Here she exudes warmth and tenderness, and in a well-pitched and technically difficult performance manages to display undercurrents of disapproval and sympathy to the audience without over-egging the pudding.

The cinematography by Ben Smithard also bears special mention, bringing to the screen a subtle yet richly evocative atmosphere of nostalgia and childhood innocence without sacrificing realism or becoming overly stylised.

In fact, one of this film's many technical merits is the fine balance it achieves between all its various flavours and ingredients; each one subtle and understated, yet combining to create a rich and satisfying whole.

As an overall viewing experience it has much to recommend it, and very little about which to complain.

I watched this wondering if it was going to be a dull, forgettable period piece or a tedious biopic and was very surprised just how good it actually was.

This is a really solid film with good performances and nicely directed. The plot concerns the true story of the life of the young Christopher Robin and the changing relationship he has with his parents in the 1920s.

It blends the mental trauma his father has been living with since his WW1 experience, and Christopher Robin's own traumatic childhood, both of witnessing his own parent's fractious relationship and then the deep unhappiness of having his life turned upside down when his fathers book, Winnie the Pooh, becomes an enormous and unexpected worldwide hit and inadvertently makes a celebrity of Christopher Robin.

This is a film primarily about family relationships and it is extremely well written too. Will Tilston, who plays Christopher Robin at 8 years old, puts in an exceptionally competent and sweet performance that makes you genuinely feel for the character.He finds the only person who actually understands and shares his anguish is his nanny, Olive (Kelly MacDonald). Olive too notices how unhappy Christopher Robin becomes but her pleas fall on deaf ears.

The only real flaw in any of the characterizations is Margot Robbie's turn as Daphne, Christopher Robin's mother. Whilst Domnhall Gleeson's AA Milne at least has some back story to explain why his mentally tortured writer is struggling to shake off his demons and thus oblivious to his son's reluctant celebrity status, Daphne comes across as somebody who is a bit cold and shallow and has no problems with watching her son get exploited to make the book a success. This may of course be what she was really like but the film doesn't dig very deep into her character. However this is a minor quibble in an otherwise well made film.

There are moments of humour in the script and no bad language so I expect this film will appeal to older audiences as well as families. The film is also just about the right length too if you like a good old fashioned biopic/drama. There is also a moral at the heart of this tale about the need to let children have a normal childhood, which is very much applicable even now.