Rudi and I went to see Christopher Robin this evening. If you’re unfamiliar with the film’s premise, it’s about what happens to the human friend of Winnie the Pooh and the other residents of the Hundred Acre Wood after he leaves his childhood playing grounds for the final time.

In this live-action version, he puts aside his “childish” things, goes to boarding school, grows up, gets married, fights in the war, and has a child. When we zoom back into his life, Christopher, now played by Ewan McGregor, is the responsible and somewhat sorrowful head of efficiency for a struggling London luggage company. He’s been tasked with saving his colleagues’ jobs, which means he’ll need to skip the weekend holiday to the country with his wife, played by Hayley Atwell of Agent Carter fame, and seven-year-old daughter that the audience can see is just as necessary to save his family.

Cue Winnie the Pooh, who in seeking his old friend’s assistance, instead may be the only one who can help him reconnect with the boy he’d been and find a path through the lonely forest of adulthood he’d gotten lost in and companions to make the journey worth taking.

This was truly a joyful film to watch — a balm for the soul — although your heart will break several times along the way. The human characters were portrayed sympathetically (with the exception of Mark Gatiss’ character, who was just over the top jerky rich guy boss), the tone felt true to the literary source material, and the animation of the stuffed animals was excellent. The technology has come a long way in the past 20 years, to such a degree that it really didn’t feel animated in any way. You’ll find yourself staring at your own stuffed animals much more closely when you return home to see if they’ve actually been staring at you all this time, waiting for you to notice.

If Christopher Robin is playing anywhere near you, don’t act like a bear of very little brains, but get yourself to the theater immediately. You will not regret it.