Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore is a Disney animated featurette from the Winnie the Pooh franchise, based on two chapters from the books Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. It was originally released theatrically for a limited time on March 11, 1983, before the re-issue of The Sword in the Stone. The short film was then widely released on March 25, 1983. It is the fourth and final of Disney's original theatrical featurettes adapted from the Pooh books by A.A. Milne.
Produced by Rick Reinert's unit and animated by former Disney animators, Ennis McNulty, Dave Bennett, Nancy Beiman, Irv Anderson, Spencer Peel, Virgil Ross, Ken O' Brien, Tom Ray, and Lars Hult, this was the first Disney animated film since the 1938 Silly Symphonies short Merbabies to be produced by an outside studio.[1] (The company had also previously produced the educational Disney short Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons in 1981).
Sources
The films plot is primarily based on two A.A. Milne stories: "In which Pooh invents a new game and Eeyore joins in" (Chapter VI from The House at Pooh Corner), and "In which Eeyore has a birthday and gets two presents" (Chapter VI of Winnie the Pooh).
Plot
The story begins with Pooh taking a walk to a wooden bridge over a river where he likes to do nothing in particular. On this particular day, though, he finds a fir cone and ends up dropping it in the river. Noticing that, due to the flow of the river, the cone went under the bridge, Pooh decides to make a racing game out of it. As the game uses sticks instead of cones, he calls the game "Poohsticks".
Sometime later, while Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, and Roo are playing "Poohsticks", they see Eeyore floating in the river below. After a somewhat successful attempt to get him to the shore, he tells them that he fell in due to being bounced from behind. When Tigger arrives on the scene, he claims that his bounce was actually a cough, leading to an argument between him and Eeyore, but with some outside help from the narrator, the friends find out that Tigger did indeed deliberately bounce Eeyore back on page 245. Tigger says it was all a joke, but nobody else feels that way. Tigger disgustedly says they have no sense of humor, and bounces away.
As Eeyore seems particularly depressed this day, Pooh follows him and asks what's wrong. Eeyore answers that he's unhappy because it's his birthday, and nobody has taken any notice to celebrate it. Pooh decides to give him a jar of honey, but doesn't get far before he has a hunger attack and ends up eating the honey. Upon realizing this, he decides to ask Owl for help. Owl writes a misspelled greeting on the pot and then flies off to tell Christopher Robin about the birthday. Piglet has planned to give a balloon to Eeyore, but when Owl greets him from the sky, he forgets to look where he was going, until he bumps into a tree and accidentally causes it to pop.
Piglet is very sad that his gift for Eeyore is spoiled, but he presents it to him anyway, and only a minute later, Pooh brings the empty pot. Eeyore is gladdened, as he can now put the broken balloon into the pot and remove it again. Pooh and his friends then pitch in and plan a surprise party for their friend.
During the party, Tigger arrives and helps himself to the festivities, as Owl had a conversation talk. This angers Rabbit, who wants Tigger to leave because of the way he treated Eeyore before. But Roo wants Tigger to stay, and Christopher Robin's solution (which Pooh asks him) is for everyone to go to the bridge and play Poohsticks. Eeyore, a first-time player, wins the most games out of everyone, while Tigger does not win at all. While Kanga, Roo, Owl, and Rabbit all decide to go home, because they all had to go to bed, Christopher Robin waves goodbye and Eeyore thanks everyone, but Tigger walks away sadly from the bridge the other way, because he won none at all, as Eeyore approaches him. Eeyore's secret for winning, as he explains to Tigger afterwards, is to "let his stick drop in a twitchy sort of way." As Tigger bounces on Eeyore again, they both go home and Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet decide that "Tigger's all right, really."
Voice cast
- Ralph Wright as Eeyore
- Hal Smith as Winnie the Pooh and Owl
- Paul Winchell as Tigger
- Laurie Main as The Narrator
- Will Ryan as Rabbit
- Dick Billingsley as Roo
- John Fiedler as Piglet
- Julie McWhirter as Kanga
- Kim Christianson as Christopher Robin
Home video releases
- Main article: Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore (video)
Trivia
- Beginning with this short, the events of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day are disregarded.
- This is the first and only Winnie the Pooh short not to have a song at the end.
- While the classic opening sequence and theme is utilized, the audio is completely re-recorded and re-arranged, with the theme sung in the key of G major (the key that plays throughout the short) instead of F major, and the opening narration now spoken by Laurie Main (instead of the late Sebastian Cabot). The cuckoo clock sound effect was also redubbed as well.
- In the French dub, the instrumental of the theme song was altered by replacing most of the oboe with a flute and has a different whistle-like sound to the tune when Pooh chases the butterfly. This version would even be used in the intro of the Dutch dub of its feature-length predecessor The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
- This is the last Winnie the Pooh short to have Ralph Wright provide the voice of Eeyore.
- This is one of Disney's last projects to put all the credits in the opening, and then only say "The End, a Walt Disney Production."
- On DVD and Blu-Ray releases of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, the short carries different voice credits than those on VHS releases. Jim Cummings (Pooh), Ken Sansom (Rabbit), Tress MacNeille (Kanga), Trevyn Savage (Christopher Robin), and Aaron Spann (Roo) are listed (with the implication of lines recorded by Paul Winchell, Ralph Wright, Hal Smith as Owl, and John Fiedler would be retained as well), despite that the original soundtrack (with Smith, Winchell, etc.) appears unaltered. This could imply that a re-dub was attempted with these actors, but ultimately was unused.
- Only Gopher is absent on this film.
- Incidentally, this film has not made any digital releases, including a Disney+ release. The film can only be found on home media releases and unofficial uploads by people on video sharing sites (putting aside a much shorter version featured in the Mini Adventures of Winnie the Pooh anthology series from Disney’s official YouTube channels).
- In fact, the short film has still not been shown in widescreen since its original theatrical release back in 1983.
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