‘Christopher Robin’ a return to Hundred Acre Wood

Oh, bother.

The misfortune of “Christopher Robin” is not only that it comes a year after “Goodbye Christopher Robin,” an earnest if sentimental tale about Winnie-the-Pooh author A.A. Milne and his son, Christopher Robin Milne, but that it arrives a few months after the screwball radiance of “Paddington 2.” When it comes to bears in London this movie year, our hearts are already spoken for.

But for those who prefer honey to marmalade, “Christopher Robin” is a more gentle and melancholic fable about recapturing the joys of childhood as an adult with the help of a wise and innocent bear. In Marc Forster’s comparatively sombre but sweet movie, the standout of Milne’s furry creatures — all of them rendered digitally as worn-out stuffed animals — is that old grump Eeyore (voiced by Brad Garrett), whose morose mutterings land nearly all the film’s laughs.

Forster has fashioned a meticulously handsome postWWII period drama — perhaps one more for adults than children — leaning much closer to ”The Velveteen Rabbit“than Saturday morning cartoon.

There’s a degree of atonement in the stylistic shift; the real Christopher Robin (never a fan of the books) lamented the Disneyfication of his father’s characters and never accepted royalties. There’s an unlikely, largely indie collection of filmmakers behind a relatively modest live-action revival. Alex Ross Perry (“Listen Up Philip”), Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight”) and Allison Schroeder (“Hidden Figures”) wrote the script.

In the opening scenes in the fictional land of the Hundred Acre Wood, Pooh and the rest are giving young Christopher Robin a farewell party. “Don’t you get all grow-ed up on us,” Tigger tells him. But after a page-turning montage, Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) has indeed done just that. He’s now a working, married man in London, wed to Evelyn (Haley Atwell), with a daughter named Madeline (Bronte Carmichael) and a grueling job. He hasn’t so much as smiled in years, Evelyn says. But on a particularly crucial work weekend, out pops Pooh from a Hundred Acre Wood portal from the trunk of a tree outside Christopher’s town house.

The voice is instantly recognizable (Pooh veteran Jim Cummings voices him, as well as Tigger) though the form is a little novel. Like the other characters, Pooh looks more a glassy-eyed teddy bear than he has before, and more frizzy than E.H. Shepard’s illustrations.