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Piglet's Big Movie

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Piglet's Big Movie
Theatrical release poster
Directed byFrancis Glebas
Screenplay by
Based onWinnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner created
by A. A. Milne (Books)
Produced byMichelle Pappalardo-Robinson
Starring
Edited byIvan Bilancio
Music by
Production
companies
Distributed byBuena Vista Pictures Distribution
Release dates
  • March 16, 2003 (2003-03-16) (Premiere)
  • March 21, 2003 (2003-03-21) (United States)
  • July 29, 2003 (2003-07-29) (Disney DVD and video)
Running time
75 minutes
CountryUnited States[1]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$46 million[3]
Box office$62.9 million[4]

Piglet's Big Movie is a 2003 American animated musical adventure comedy-drama film released by Walt Disney Pictures on March 21, 2003. The film features the characters from the Winnie-the-Pooh books written by A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard and is the third theatrically released Winnie the Pooh feature. In this film, Piglet is ashamed of being small and clumsy and wanders off into the Hundred Acre Wood, leading all of his friends to form a search party to find him.

Piglet's Big Movie was produced by the Japanese office of Disneytoon Studios and the animation production was by Walt Disney Animation Japan, Inc. with additional animation provided by Gullwing Co., Ltd., additional background by Studio Fuga and digital ink and paint by T2 Studio.

Plot

Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, and Rabbit are working on a plan to get honey from a beehive by tricking the bees into leaving their hive. Piglet arrives and wants to help, but is told that he is too small to help. The plan goes awry when the bees see through the plan, but Piglet manages to divert the bees into a new hive and trap them. Unfortunately, Piglet's friends take all the credit for themselves when they fail to notice Piglet's heroism, making him leave dejectedly. After the bees break free, Pooh, Rabbit, Tigger, and Eeyore escape to Piglet's house. When they notice that Piglet is missing, they decide to find him. Using Piglet's scrapbook as a guide, the five use the pictures to tell the stories depicted therein, leading to several flashbacks.

The first story told is when Kanga and Roo first moved to the Hundred Acre Wood. Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Rabbit are afraid of the newcomers and Rabbit concocts a plan to use Piglet as a decoy, so they could ransom Roo to force Kanga to leave. When Kanga finds out about the plan, she plays along by pretending that Piglet is Roo, where Piglet learns of how nice she is. Meanwhile, Roo and Rabbit get along and, realizing how nice they are, everyone agrees to let Kanga and Roo stay. Back in the present, Roo joins the others in searching for Piglet.

The second story is of the expedition to find the North Pole. When Roo falls into the river, Piglet uses a long stick to launch him out. Unfortunately, his heroism is overlooked when he gives the stick to Pooh to try to catch Roo (where he is caught by his mother), and Christopher Robin credits Pooh with finding the North Pole (the stick). Back in the present, the friends regret not sharing the praise with Piglet.

The third story concerns the building of the House at Pooh Corner. Piglet gets the idea of building Eeyore a house in an area they named "Pooh Corner" and are joined by Tigger to build it. As Tigger and Pooh build the house after finding some neatly stacked sticks, Piglet struggles to keep up and every attempt to build the house falls apart. Tigger and Pooh go to inform Eeyore of the bad news, leaving Piglet behind. When they find Eeyore, he says that he already built himself a house out of sticks, revealing that the sticks Pooh and Tigger found was his house. Piglet then arrives and leads them back to Eeyore's newly completed house. Once again, Piglet's contributions are overlooked as the wind gets the credit for moving Eeyore's house.

Back in the present, an argument between Rabbit and Tigger ends with the scrapbook falling into a river. Without their guide, the friends return to Piglet's house and, after making drawings of Piglet's heroism, the friends again resolve to find Piglet. During their search, they come across several pages from the scrapbook, which have floated downstream, where they find the book's bindings suspended on a hollow log looming over a waterfall. Pooh goes to retrieve it, but he falls into a hole in the log, and the others are unable to reach him. At that moment, Piglet arrives and helps pull Pooh to safety just as the log begins to break in half. Eeyore, Rabbit, Roo and Tigger manage to escape, but the front half breaks off, making the survivors believe that Piglet and Pooh perished. Fortunately, Pooh and Piglet managed to get out in time by jumping into the bottom half of the log and reunite with their friends, but the scrapbook itself is destroyed by the fall.

Although saddened by this loss, Piglet's friends take him back to his house to show him their new drawings. During a party the next day, Pooh takes Piglet to Eeyore's house, revealing that he changed the sign to read "Pooh and Piglet Corner". When everyone else arrives, Pooh claims that "it's the least [they] could do for a very small Piglet who has done such very big things." The camera pulls back to show a large shadow of Piglet behind everyone.

Cast

Main article: List of Winnie-the-Pooh characters

Production

Piglet's Big Movie was produced by Disneytoon Studios, Walt Disney Animation (Japan), Gullwing Co., Ltd, Studio Fuga, and T2 Studio.

The film was originally intended as a direct-to-video release, in February 2002 Disney announced that the film and The Jungle Book 2 would be released theatrically.[5]

Music

Piglet's Big Movie (Soundtrack)
Soundtrack album by
Carly Simon
ReleasedMarch 18, 2003
Recorded2002–2003
Length43:02
LabelWalt Disney Records
Producer
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[6]

American singer-songwriter Carly Simon wrote seven new songs for the film, and performed six of them ("If I Wasn't So Small", "Mother's Intuition", "Sing Ho for the Life of a Bear", "With a Few Good Friends", "The More I Look Inside", and "Comforting to Know"), as well as recording her own version of the Sherman brothers' "Winnie the Pooh" theme song.[7]

"The More It Snows" features Jim Cummings and John Fiedler, as Pooh and Piglet. Simon was accompanied by her children Ben Taylor and Sally Taylor on many of the songs. Renée Fleming accompanied Simon on the song "Comforting to Know". On "Sing Ho for the Life of a Bear" Simon was accompanied by the cast.[8]

The soundtrack also features five tracks of the film's score by Carl Johnson, as well as five of Simon's original demonstration recordings.

Songs

Original songs performed in the film include:

No.TitlePerformer(s)Length
1."Winnie the Pooh"Carly Simon, Ben Taylor, Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman2:53
2."If I Wasn't So Small (The Piglet Song)"Carly Simon1:57
3."Mother's Intuition"Carly Simon2:38
4."Sing Ho for the Life of a Bear"Carly Simon & Cast1:37
5."The More It Snows (Tiddely-Pom)"Jim Cummings & John Fiedler1:02
6."With A Few Good Friends"Carly Simon, Ben Taylor & Sally Taylor2:38
7."The More I Look Inside"Carly Simon4:22
8."Comforting to Know"Carly Simon & Renée Fleming4:37

Reception

Box office

Piglet's Big Movie was number seven on the box-office charts on its opening weekend, earning $6 million. The film domestically grossed $23 million,[4] half the amount of what The Tigger Movie earned,[9] and it grossed nearly $63 million worldwide.[4]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a rating of 70% based on 77 reviews, and an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's critical consensus is "Wholesome and charming entertainment for young children."[10] On Metacritic the film has a score of 62/100 based on reviews from 23 critics.[11] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade A, on a scale of A+ to F.[12]

Film critic Stephen Holden of New York Times called the film an "oasis of gentleness and wit".[13] Nancy Churnin of The Dallas Morning News stated that Piglet's Big Movie was "one of the nifty pleasures in the process", despite her belief that "Disney may be milking its classics".[14]

Accolades

Award Category Recipient Result
Annie Awards[15] Outstanding Effects Animation Madoka Yasue Nominated

Games

In 2003, Disney released Piglet's Big Game for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Game Boy Advance, as well as a game on CD-ROM that was also entitled Piglet's Big Game. The latter was developed by Doki Denki Studio and involves helping Piglet assist in the preparation for a "Very Large Soup Party". [16] In their review, Edutaining Kids praised various features including the adventure/exploration aspect (the game is linear instead of using a main screen) and many of the activities (such as the color mixing, which they said offers an incredible variety of hues), but noted that it is much too brief and that Kanga and Roo are absent.[17]

Sources

The film's plot is based primarily on five A. A. Milne stories: "In which Piglet meets a Heffalump," "In which Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest, and Piglet Has a Bath," and "In which Christopher Robin Leads an Expedition to the North Pole" (chapters 5, 7, and 8 of Winnie-the-Pooh); and "In which a house is built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore" and "In which a search is organized and Piglet nearly meets the Heffalump again" (chapters 1 and 3 of The House at Pooh Corner).

Releases

Marketing

Disney released a teaser trailer of Piglet's Big Movie in May 2002 on The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh 25th-anniversary edition DVD home video releases and on the Winnie the Pooh: A Very Merry Pooh Year DVD release in November 2002. The teaser was later attached to theatrical screenings of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Lilo & Stitch, The Powerpuff Girls Movie and Stuart Little 2. The next trailer for the film was released with the theatrical screenings of Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, Treasure Planet, The Wild Thornberrys Movie and The Jungle Book 2. The trailers for the film were later attached to other Disney home video releases.

Theatrical

The film premiered March 16, 2003 and opened in theaters on March 21, 2003.

Home media

The film was released on VHS and DVD on July 29, 2003.[18]

References

  1. ^ a b "Piglet's Big Movie (2003)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Archived from the original on August 16, 2022. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
  2. ^ a b "Piglet's Big Movie (2003)". Archived from the original on February 28, 2022. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
  3. ^ "Piglet's Big Movie (2003)". The Wrap. Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  4. ^ a b c "Piglet's Big Movie 2003". boxofficemojo.com. May 29, 2003. Archived from the original on March 15, 2009. Retrieved March 6, 2009.
  5. ^ "Disney bets on Piglet's prospects". February 19, 2002.
  6. ^ "AllMusic review". AllMusic. Archived from the original on March 30, 2015. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
  7. ^ "Carly Simon Official Website – Piglet's Big Movie". Archived from the original on January 14, 2012. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  8. ^ "Piglet's Big Movie". AllMusic. Archived from the original on March 30, 2015. Retrieved April 1, 2015.
  9. ^ "The Tigger Movie 2000". boxofficemojo.com. Archived from the original on April 14, 2009. Retrieved March 6, 2009.
  10. ^ Piglet's Big Movie (2003), archived from the original on June 5, 2020, retrieved September 15, 2020
  11. ^ Piglet's Big Movie, archived from the original on May 18, 2021, retrieved September 15, 2020
  12. ^ "Cinemascore :: Movie Title Search". February 6, 2018. Archived from the original on February 6, 2018. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
  13. ^ Holden, Stephen (March 21, 2003). "Film in Review; 'Piglet's Big Movie'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 30, 2013. Retrieved March 6, 2009.
  14. ^ Churnin, Nancy (March 18, 2003). "Piglet's Big Movie". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved March 6, 2009.
  15. ^ "31st Annie Awards (2004)". Annie Awards. Archived from the original on April 4, 2019. Retrieved May 20, 2018.
  16. ^ "Disney Piglet's Big Game (CD-ROM)". Children's Software Online. Archived from the original on October 20, 2015. Retrieved August 6, 2009.
  17. ^ "Children's Software Review: Disney: Piglet's Big Game". Edutaining Kids.com. April 2009. Archived from the original on August 14, 2009. Retrieved August 5, 2009.
  18. ^ "Video Releases". Chicago Tribune. July 3, 2003. pp. 5–7. Archived from the original on July 26, 2022. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
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