Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005)

Image credit: Pooh's Heffalump Movie: Disney

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES Harmless kiddie fare about a once-imaginary beastie

I know what you're thinking: Aren't Heffalumps like closet monsters, inventions of a fearful Piglet-brain? Not anymore. In Disney's latest expansion of Pooh Corner, the already xenophobic Hundred Acre Wood community (remember how they reacted when single-mom Kanga moved in?) gets riled over perceived incursions by these elephantine bêtes noires, long feared but (crucially) never glimpsed. It's a call for Rabbit-sponsored alarm, but it's also a chance for little Roo (developmentally delayed by all those Carly Simon-penned songs his mother sings him) to prove he's grown-up enough for a Heffa-hunt. When he meets Lumpy (irresistibly voiced by 8-year-old Brit Kyle Stanger), the martial tone softens and lessons of tolerance are learned. What was accomplished with quiet nuance in A. A. Milne's stories (where Roo himself was the outsider) is all melodramatic fanfare here; but if you're willing to accept the initial betrayal of the mythos, Pooh's Heffalump Movie is a harmless little ''ex-po-tition'' (to use a Pooh-ism). Still, making this your kids' first Pooh experience would be like weaning them on New Coke.