Springtime with Roo is a 2004 direct-to-video animated musical adventure film, featuring characters from Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh franchise. It is a very loose adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and normally based on the A.A. Milne stories.
Synopsis
An overexcited Roo, along with Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Eeyore, pays Rabbit a visit to celebrate Easter. But instead of finding an Easter party they find a Spring Cleaning Day celebration led by Rabbit who makes up the holiday to replace Easter. While the gang clean up Rabbit's house, Roo finds all their Easter eggs and decorations stored away in Rabbit's closet, and throws a surprise Easter party for Rabbit. Unfortunately, he is clearly annoyed and enraged at them for not doing his "Spring Cleaning Day", and sends them out to clean. Roo is sad that Rabbit is unhappy, and Tigger wants Roo to have a happy Easter, so Tigger tries to talk to Rabbit while Roo and the others try to make an Easter celebration of their own in their hopes of cheering up Rabbit.
In order to convince Rabbit that he still misses Easter and how he used to like it to which Rabbit does not believe from hating it so much, Tigger and the Narrator take Rabbit out of the storybook and back in time [a few chapters of the book] (Which is over hundreds of pages away) to last year's Easter celebration. Rabbit, as the Easter Bunny, tried to make everything as organized, orderly, and perfect as possible, treating Easter like a business rather than a great holiday. Tigger and the others wanted to have fun and unique with making and hunting the eggs, but Rabbit was actually shown to be very over-protective on his views of the holiday, claiming, "It isn't fun; it's Easter!" So Tigger and the others swiped all the Easter eggs behind Rabbit's back, and he found them hunting the eggs and celebrating Easter without him. Everyone is more happy with Tigger being the "Easter Bunny" instead of Rabbit. Feeling left out of the fun and disappointed that he isn't the one getting this kind of honor from his friends, it was then he decided to stop the Hundred Acre Wood from having another Easter celebration again, believing that if he couldn’t enjoy Easter, no one could. Rabbit finds out Tigger was right about him liking Easter in his past, but instead of agreeing to allow the holiday back, Rabbit then sadly tells Tigger he wants to be left alone, still upset and bitter about his past and accusing Tigger of stealing his role as the Easter Bunny.
The present Tigger sadly returns to tell Roo and the others that Easter is still banned while Rabbit returns home in the book. Although Tigger feels that he had let Roo down, the only thing Roo wants is for Rabbit to be happy again, so he and the others try to come up with a plan to do so. Meanwhile, the narrator purposely takes Rabbit to Roo's house instead of his own to show him how much Roo and the others still care about him, and how he should do the same thing, but Rabbit remains unconvinced, heads home and puts all the Easter supplies in a chest, frustrating the narrator. So late that night, the narrator takes Rabbit into the "pages that not have yet been written", or into the future of the Hundred Acre Wood. It is Spring Cleaning Day, and all the supplies and chores are organized exactly as Rabbit wanted. Rabbit is happy about this at first, but he later learns that the Hundred-Acre-Wood is deserted. All his friends had moved away because of his selfishness and bossy attitude. Christopher Robin, Owl and Gopher (who are not present in this film) have also moved away (most likely to not get involved). Rabbit wonders why his friends would leave him and the narrator tells him it's because he didn't treat them as friends and shows him how he acted throughout the movie by telling him that all he thought about was what he wanted. Rabbit finally realizes that he was a jerk to his friends, and he was wrong to try to control and take away something that everyone shares and loves and decides to change the future by changing his attitude to everyone else. But however, he learns that the Easter supplies were taken with his friends when they moved and he screams in terror or fear until he wakes up on Easter day finding out he still has a chance to change the future.
At the same time, Roo and the others come up with another idea in hopes of cheering Rabbit up, and while they are busy working, Rabbit, feeling as "giddy as a jackrabbit", brings out all the Easter decorations and starts happily preparing a big surprise for his friends. He apologizes to his friends for his behavior and gives everyone their Easter supplies. Roo then hands Rabbit his repaired old Easter Bunny hat, to which Rabbit is touched and allows Tigger to lead the hunt. The movie ends with the annual Easter celebration proceeding as planned.
Cast
- Jimmy Bennett – Roo
- Jim Cummings – Winnie the Pooh/Tigger
- Ken Sansom – Rabbit
- John Fiedler – Piglet
- Kath Soucie – Kanga
- Peter Cullen – Eeyore
- David Ogden Stiers – Narrator
Songs
- We're Huntin' Eggs Today
- Sniffly Sniff
- Easter Day With You
- The Way It Must Be Done
- Easter Day With You (reprise)
- The Grandest Easter Ever (Rabbit's reprise)
- Easter Day With You (finale)
Home video
The film was released direct-to-DVD and direct-to-VHS on March 9, 2004. It included the theatrical trailer for Pooh's Heffalump Movie and the two episodes from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ("Honey for a Bunny" and "Trap as Trap Can"). The film was later released on Blu-ray on March 11, 2014 as the Hippity-Hoppity Roo edition. The film is a part of Disney Movies Anywhere program.
Trivia
- Christopher Robin, Owl, and Gopher are absent in this film.
- The first of the three characters was mentioned at the opening.
- The story's climax resolves in a direct homage to A Christmas Carol, with the Narrator speaking to Rabbit about his poor behavior and showing him a dark future in which Rabbit lives alone in the Hundred Acre Wood.
- The similarity is noted by Tigger in when he asks Rabbit, "What the Dickens—and I do mean 'Dickens'—is going on here?", during which he turns and winks at the audience (and breaks the fourth wall).
- When Tigger was guessing what word that Rabbit didn't want to say, he said onomatopoeia and explains that it is a word.
- Like A Christmas Carol, Tigger takes on the role of Ghost of Christmas Past and the Narrator takes the roles of Ghosts of Christmas Present and Future.
- Roo interrupted the beginning just like Tigger in The Tigger Movie and the Narrator references said movie.
- Lumpy makes a cameo in this film, but he didn't make his first official appearance until Pooh's Heffalump Movie.
- Rabbit stopping Easter because he was not the Easter Bunny in his past is based on how Ebenezer Scrooge's sister dies in Scrooge's past which causes him to start being stingy, selfish, and unkind.
- From this movie onward, the running time is about one hour and three-to-five minutes.
- The fourth wall is completely broken in this movie.
- The 2004 original release uses the 1990 Walt Disney Pictures Logo at the start and at the end of the movie.
- The 2014 Hippity-Hoppity Roo edition release uses the 2011 variant of the 2006 Walt Disney Pictures Logo with just Disney at the start and at the end of the movie.
External links
Springtime with Roo on Wikipedia
Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo on Disney.com- Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo at the Big Cartoon DataBase
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