Winnie the Pooh

Directed by Stephen J Anderson and Don Hall. Voices of Jim Cummings, John Cleese, Craig Ferguson, Travis Oates, Bud Lackey, Tom Kenny G cert, gen release, 69 min

DARKER, MOODIER, tortured; the new Winnie the Poohwas never going to make any concessions to such grown-up things. AA Milne's bear is simply too soft and round to be edgy. And don't expect a Venom-style alter ego – Disney's 51st animated feature studiously avoids the attributes we've come to associate with franchise reboots.

Longtime Pooh watchers may, nonetheless, note small changes around Hundred Acre Wood – sorry, 100 Aker Wood. Narrator John Cleese now squabbles with the titular ursine when the perennially hungry Pooh insists on messing up the words on the animated storybook page.

There are other new voices too. Tom Kenny, the pipes behind SpongeBob SquarePants, does the honours as Rabbit; Craig Ferguson’s Owl is appositely grandiloquent; Zooey Deschanel sings the old theme song; Bud Lackey’s Eeyore is endearingly Old West even if he can’t quite replicate the gloom of Ralph Wright’s original.

The film-makers have done commendable work in insulating their fluffy hero from the mean old modern world. Their Pooh, despite his crisp, digitised colouring, might have emerged from the Disney imprint at any time in the studio’s history.

Adapted from a trilogy of Milne tales that includes In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail, In Which Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the North Poleand In Which Rabbit Has a Busy Day, the new Winnie is indistinguishable from the old one. A simple creature, he craves honey and duets with his rumbling tummy. Elsewhere, his friends fret over Eeyore's missing appendage and Christopher Robin's possible apprehension by something called a Backson.

Technically, this is only Winnie the Pooh's second film (outings such as The Piglet Movieand The Tigger Moviewere actually pieced together from shorts), but at least two of the new subplots have featured elsewhere. Oddly, we feel comforted rather than gypped by the familiarity. After all, not changing is what a teddy bear does best.