Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023)

Now don't judge. You mustn't judge. If you do this will come across as the most atrocious piece of cinema since "Mesa of Lost Women" (1953). "Christopher Robin" (Nikolai Leon) is taking his fiancee back to the wood in which he played with "Pooh", "Piglet", "Eyeore" etc. as a child. What he doesn't appreciate, though, is that in the intervening years things got tough for his erstwhile friends. They couldn't fend for themselves, and were reduced to cannibalism to survive.... Aside from altering the balance of their tiny mids, this also instilled in "Pooh" and "Piglet" a grim and determined need for vengeance. What now ensues is hilarious. What ever budget there was must have been spent on gin for the cast: the costumes and lighting are pretty dreadful and the script - well that is almost as bad as the acting. Leon is quite easy on the eye, but the sight of him being whipped to within an inch of his life with the tail of "Eyeore" by a large man in an ill-fitting yellow bear suit whose mouth was oozing honey like a drooling bairn just has to be seen. Cinema can be too earnest and worthy at times, and I think this is the perfect recalibration for that - it is certainly neither, nor is it a film you will ever (want to) remember after you've seen it. Still, the cinema was packed and there was laughter a-plenty throughout the eighty minutes or so this risible drivel lasted. It could easily be a school project - nothing here is of an higher standard, and it did make me squirm at times as the 1970s "Doctor Who" special effects department came back to life - but I didn't hate it.