"The Book of Pooh" is the second live-action TV adaption of A.A. Milne's beloved character Winnie the Pooh and friends have gotten by Disney. The first was "Welcome to Pooh Corner" some years back, which featured full-body costumes and not so much puppets, as this one does.
I love puppetry, a big fan of Sesame Street and the Muppets myself, but I have a feeling that the move to puppets was made to crank out more of the popular 'Pooh' faster than is possible with animation. Here, the foam and fleece characters don't have much restriction to their movements. The backgrounds are all punched in on a blue screen, so it seems the puppeteers were free to move about the stage.
I guess kids who like Pooh can be happy because their pushing out tons of these, but theres nothing special about the stories and the presentation is a bit fluffy.
I love puppetry, a big fan of Sesame Street and the Muppets myself, but I have a feeling that the move to puppets was made to crank out more of the popular 'Pooh' faster than is possible with animation. Here, the foam and fleece characters don't have much restriction to their movements. The backgrounds are all punched in on a blue screen, so it seems the puppeteers were free to move about the stage.
I guess kids who like Pooh can be happy because their pushing out tons of these, but theres nothing special about the stories and the presentation is a bit fluffy.