GOODBYECHRISTOPHERROBIN(PG) ***
THE dark age of celebrity parents monetising their cherubic children dawned many years before the scourge of selfies, social media and smart phones.
In the handsomely-crafted drama Goodbye Christopher Robin, battle-scarred author A A Milne and his wife Daphne treat their young son as a sales tool in the mid-1920s to promote the literary adventures of a hunnyloving bear called Winnie-The-Pooh.
A tender exchange by telephone between father and son is broadcast live on the radio without the boy’s consent or prior knowledge, a trip to the zoo turns into a calculated photo opportunity with the resident brown bear, and playtime is curtailed to make way for a busy schedule of interviews and meet ‘n’ greets.
The sacrifice of one little boy’s childhood innocence for the happiness and healing of a shell-shocked Britain, which has been devastated by the Great War, is at the wounded heart of Simon Curtis’ picture.
The script, co-written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Simon Vaughan, gradually exposes the anguish and resentment that festered beneath the Hundred Acre Wood.
Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) returns to London from the trenches, where he witnessed hundreds of countrymen cut down in their prime.
“Find something to be happy about and stick to that,” glibly suggests his wife Daphne (Margot Robbie), who cannot understand her husband’s inner turmoil.
Angered by the senseless loss of life, Milne abandons the capital for a quaint house in Ashdown Forest, transplanting Daphne, their young son Christopher Robin (Will Tilston) and the boy’s nanny Olive (Kelly Macdonald) to the verdant idyll.
Milne hopes to pen a fierce rebuke against war, but is repeatedly distracted by his son.
“I’d really like if you wrote a book for me,” says Christopher Robin sweetly. “I’d definitely read it.”
A walk with the boy through the sun-dappled landscape fertilises Milne’s imagination and he contemplates a book that magically brings to life his son’s