After being introduced to ruin the 100 Acre Wood in 2005’s “Pooh’s Heffalump Movie,” Disney brings Heffalump back to ruin my favorite holiday, Halloween. Normally Winnie the Pooh is very good about ringing in Halloween, but “Heffalump Halloween Movie” is a pretty dull adventure, sadly. The whole attempt to curb the entire narrative toward the bland goofy elephant, and away from Winnie the Pooh is uninteresting.
Despite Pooh being as fun as ever, and the characters all showing up to do what they do best, when the movie is focused on Heffalump (or “Lumpy”), the narrative stumbles and loses its magic. This time around “Lumpy” is terrified of Halloween despite everyone else around him celebrating everything fun about the occasion. “Lumpy” agrees to go out with Little Roo to explore the 100 acre wood, but when “Lumpy” loses his courage, Roo regales him with the truncated story of “Boo to you too! Winnie the Pooh.”
The call back to the original movie might be because John Fiedler, who’d played Piglet for decades, had died a few months prior to the film’s release. That’s also probably the explanation as to why Piglet doesn’t really appear for during Lumpy’s story. That’s not the writer’s faults, but it affects the whole film, nonetheless. Without Piglet, the whole shebang feels incomplete, despite their best efforts to make “Lumpy” the cowardly presence. There’s discussion about the dreaded “Gobloon,” and misunderstanding involving a jack o’lantern that’s kind of cute, all things considered.
In either case, the 100 Acre Wood is still very good at creating that great Halloween ambience, and folks like Jim Cummings and Kathie Soucie are still as great as ever. It’s just the movie’s writing falls flat, amounting to a pretty lackluster Halloween tale. I hate “Lumpy” and I’m glad over the years Disney have somewhat phased him out of existence.