Soft, fuzzy and sickly sweet. Like a hug from a honey-covered bear.

At its core, nostalgia is a simple, easily malleable creature and studios like Disney know it. Executed in just the right way, nostalgia can be an absolute gold mine for Hollywood and right now audiences are lapping it up.

Of course, nostalgia has always been here with us in some form, as we continually hanker for that ill-defined point in the past we felt at our safest or at our personal peak. However, as the world accelerates forward at an ever-increasing speed, our desire to look to the safe-haven of history is stronger than ever, with cinema more than happy to provide shelter…for the right fee, naturally.

It may sound cynical, but that’s Hollywood for you, and it’s precisely the approach that’s seen Disney drag themselves from the gutter of the early millennium to their healthiest place in decades. Beginning in earnest with 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, the studio’s recent focus on live-action remakes of beloved classics is as clever as it is calculated, banking on tugging the heart (and purse) strings of parents, while moulding a new generation of fans from their offspring in the process.

It’s the perfect money-making storm and they’re only just getting started, yet Disney know full well that nostalgia alone won’t cut it. For the most part, these live-action remakes have managed to escape their own nostalgia bubble, however, for a film whose entire plot revolves around the very notion of reconnecting with the past, Christopher Robin certainly has an uphill task ahead of it to become anything more significant than a wistful jaunt down memory lane.

Setting off for boarding school, a young Christopher Robin bids farewell to Winnie the Pooh (Jim Cummings) and the gang with promises of remembering them forever. Fast forward a few decades and an adult Christopher (Ewan McGregor) has long since forgotten his stuffed chums, grown up, and lost his way entirely. Distant from his wife (Hayley Atwell) and daughter (Bronte Carmichael), and increasingly stressed with work, Christopher finds himself drawn back to the Hundred Acre Wood, as Pooh and his old friends help him rediscover the loving, playful boy he once was.

While certainly not a character exclusive to Disney, there are few more enduring and much-loved figures in the studio’s arsenal than Winnie the Pooh. Making his first appearance in the 1966 short, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Pooh has since gone on to have such a long and successful career with Disney that their classic design for the character and his pals has become the default image for many.

However, much like the grownup Christopher Robin, Pooh has seemingly slipped from the public’s thoughts in recent years. Without a big screen appearance since the lukewarm success of 2011’s Winnie the Pooh, the once-beloved character appears in real danger of fading from the public’s memory entirely. Yet, precisely because of this, now feels like as good a time as any for a little trip back to the Hundred Acre Wood.

Christopher Robin (politely) asks us to follow it through the tree door to our own childhood, to embrace the joy once felt from watching Tigger bounce around like a hyperactive clown, Eeyore trapped in eternal grumpiness, and Pooh getting his face stuck in a honey pot. They’re all simple triggers, aimed at transporting us back to our hazy, rose-tinted past, yet they’re deployed efficiently and effectively, without us ever feeling force-fed.

Simple, low-key, and understated; the film’s execution is well done, with some lovely touches that’ll warm the heart and gently stoke your nostalgic embers, yet this only works to a point. With muted tones and a calm, steady pace, Christopher Robin’s approach to its fantasy elements feels more akin to director Marc Foster’s grounded Finding Neverland than the pantomime mawkishness of something like Hook, that, while welcome, often comes off a little underwhelming.

With the beautiful but drab cinematography and the tired, worn appearance of Pooh and friends after years of neglect, Christopher Robin certainly evokes a feeling of long-lost innocence, however, like rummaging through a dusty trunk of old toys in your parent’s loft, the fun to be found in trying to rediscover that childlike joy just feels a bit muted.

Nice may not be the most glowing adjective to hang on anything, let alone a movie, but that’s precisely what Christopher Robin is. It’s a nice film with a nice cast, nice characters, and some nice, harmless action; yet it struggles to go beyond that. The film does what it sets out to do efficiently but it’s all so warm and fuzzy that there’s little impact to anything it attempts.

The opportunity is certainly there for Christopher Robin to take its issues and delve deeper into them, yet it all feels a little shallow. Christopher Robin’s stressed domestic life and the emotional distance between himself and his family, built up through years of war, work, and financial worries, feels ripe for further development, especially with Pooh used as a colourful contrast to such darkness, yet the film never truly delivers on its promise.

Caught somewhere between the darkness of the adult world and the inherent fun of the source material, Christopher Robin ends up a thoroughly middle-of-the-road affair that will struggle to satisfy either adults or kids in the audience. The film certainly isn’t lacking in endeavour, yet, much like last year’s Goodbye Christopher Robin, it fails to effectively strike the required tonal balance, resulting in a film that feels neither here nor there.

The story behind Christopher Robin is a deeply human one, built on a celebration of childhood and the necessity of imagination to the human experience, yet the film’s real-life characters are by far its least interesting aspect. Ewan McGregor and Hayley Atwell are as solid and dependable as ever, and Mark Gatiss plays the slimy corporate bigwig role well perfectly, yet their reserved, buttoned-down performances are comprehensively outshined by their cuddly co-stars.

With a perfectly suited voice cast, including long-time Pooh and Tigger inhabitant, Jim Cummings, the residents of the Hundred Acre Wood do wonders to inject warmth and wonder into a film that threatens to go cold at any moment. The soothing tones of Cummings in particular are enough on their own to send pangs of nostalgia up your spine which, supplemented by a top-notch vocal ensemble that includes Brad Garrett, Peter Capaldi, and Toby Jones, gently conjure up fond childhood memories you may not have even known you had…they’re that good.

Fun and gently humorous, Pooh and friends may be computer generated but they feel just as real, if not more so, than their human counterparts, with character designs that cleverly evoke both the classic Disney animation and E. H. Shepard’s iconic original illustrations. Full of life, yet suitably worn and weathered, the CGI is of the highest quality, feeling simultaneously fantastical and natural in a way that fits the film’s tone perfectly.

Drawing close comparisons to the recent Paddington films, the character design for Pooh and the film’s various other stuffed creatures is absolutely seamless and, while there’s always the risk that a live-action/CGI crossover will come across as somewhat silly in these circumstances, the film pulls it off faultlessly.

Paddington is clearly where Disney and Marc Forster’s ambitions lie but, while the character work certainly lives up to expectations, Christopher Robin comes up way short in terms of story, with a thin, unimaginative plot that floats along with little purpose towards a conclusion that feels far too predictable.

With forced stakes and a huge dollop of schmaltz, Christopher Robin’s narrative showcases little ambition to be anything other than a nice stroll down memory lane, while it’s hard not to feel just a bit cheated by such a neatly tied bow of a conclusion. When it works, the film’s sentimentality pushes just the right buttons, yet, when it doesn’t, it’s as sickly sweet and nauseating as polishing off an entire pot of honey in one sitting.

While it’s impossible not to let your emotions get the better of you when Geoff Zanelli and Jon Brion’s wonderful score kicks into the classic Winnie the Pooh theme, or as Christopher Robin bids farewell to Pooh before departing for boarding school, these moments are far too fleeting. There’s a lot of joy to be had in seeing Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh rediscover their friendship or witnessing the slapstick fun of Pooh re-entering Christopher’s life like a honey-covered wrecking ball, yet far too little is made of these moments for the film to be wholly satisfying.

Arriving at a time when Disney’s live-action remake machine is starting to really pick up pace, Christopher Robin feels like an entirely different approach than the likes of Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book. Taking its lead from the quietly brilliant Pete’s Dragon, Christopher Robin attempts a far more stripped back approach to its source material, adequately ticking the nostalgia box without ever really rocking the boat.

Much like Paddington, Christopher Robin’s nostalgia is tastefully done and well balanced without becoming forced, yet it can’t escape its retrograde bubble to achieve anything more substantial. Safe, generic, and far too saccharine; Christopher Robin’s narrative never stretches itself to take advantage of either the imagination and fantasy of the source material, nor the emotional darkness of the subject matter. Despite the wonderful CGI character design and voice work of Pooh and company, as well as the fun inherent in catching up with old friends, Christopher Robin remains a light-hearted, yet light-weight, nostalgia piece that won’t last long in the memory.