‘GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN’
RATED: PG (for thematic elements, some bullying, war images and brief language) WHEN: Opens today WHERE: High Ridge
Not for a moment is my intent to make light of the very real terrors of PTSD, or to minimize what Milne reportedly experienced in the aftermath of “the war to end all wars,” which did nothing of the kind. It’s just that “Goodbye Christopher Robin” tries to straddle the line between a whimsical origins story about the beloved Pooh et al., and a harsh character study about unlikable adults who are far better at exploiting a child than loving him.
Director Simon Curtis (“My Week With Marilyn,” “Woman in Gold”) and the screenwriters place the focus on Milne, who returns from the war, finds London society life unbearable and drags his shallow, ever-complaining, partyloving wife, Daphne (Margot Robbie), and their young son, Billy (Will Tilston), to a remote country home in East Sussex, which is surrounded by a vibrant forest cut with winding paths and wooden bridges, and a gentle stream.
As written, Robbie’s Daphne is an unbearable nag, and the performance doesn’t help. Even when Daphne takes a break from whining to play with Billy and give voice to his stuffed animals, she sounds manic and self-absorbed.
After Daphne storms back to London, with no word on when she’ll return, the kindly nanny, Olive (Kelly Macdonald, the brogue-voiced narrator of the trailer), continues on as a loving mother figure to Billy. But then Olive must leave, and now it’s just Milne and the son he’s barely spoken to in the first years of the boy’s life.
This leads to the most endearing section of “Goodbye Christopher Robin,” with Milne and his son and the boy’s stuffed animals embarking on adventures of the imagination in the woods, which eventually inspires Milne to take pen to paper.
But things get nasty again when “Winnie the Pooh” becomes a global sensation and the world demands to meet “the real Christopher Robin,” and both A.A. and his wife trot their boy around as a prop, oblivious to how much harm they’re inflicting.
Little wonder when we flash forward to Christopher at age 18 (now played by Alex Lawther), he’s seething with resentment, having lived in a fishbowl as a boy and now spending his teen years being bullied and tormented by classmates once they find out the new kid named Billy is actually Christopher Robin.
“Goodbye Christopher Robin” tries to put a bow on the package at the end, with the icy and self-centered Daphne finally showing a trace of heart (but only when she thinks her son has been killed in action), and scenes of Milne and Christopher hashing out the past.
It doesn’t quite ring true, maybe in part because we know, in real life, Christopher never really forgave his parents. He refused to take a dime of royalties from any Winnie the Pooh-related books or merchandise or adaptations. He was never close with his father and he didn’t speak to his mother once during the last 15 years of her life.
Like a tap that was turned on, the sadness and anger never stopped pouring out.