Monday 2 October 2017

Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)

Before watching Goodbye Christopher Robin, the only thing I had heard about it was a headline from Peter Bradshaw's single-star Guardian review, which contained the word 'joyless'.

I've noticed that my tastes often run contrary to Bradshaw's, so I was hoping this was going to be one of those cases - particularly as there seems to be a lack of films playing in the cinema that I haven't already seen.

The film tells the story of A.A. Milne and the relationship with his son, the real-life Christopher Robin (although everyone calls him Billy Moon), and the effect of being catapulted into the spotlight by the runaway success of the Winnie the Pooh books.

I knew a little of the story before seeing it - for the sake of fully enjoying the film, I knew just about enough, but not too much of the real-life events. There are of emotional moments in it - one of them is telegraphed from the beginning of the film - where not knowing the full history of Milne worked in the film's favour for me.

Unlike Bradshaw's take on the film, I found it completely charming. There's a sub-genre of films based on the lives of popular English writers (Miss Potter springs to mind) that this fits nicely into, and for my money (based on my current spending on my cinema pass, that's about £100 for this ticket), one of the better examples.




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