In cinemas this week: Christopher Robin tale just the job to spark your imagination

WE all lose some of our imagination and wonder as we get older – but a visit from Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and pals would help.

That’s what happens to Ewan McGregor in his latest movie, anyway.

The popular Scottish star plays Christopher Robin, who has grown up and lost much of his joy about simply being alive, not to mention much of his vivid imagination.

All of which means that grown-ups will find it easy to relate to this latest Disney movie along with the kids.

Orton O’Brien plays the young Christopher, and much of the filming was done at Ashdown Forest in Sussex, the very place where AA Milne lived, wrote and took the real Christopher Robin – his son – for walks.

Windsor Great Park was also used but a tragedy prevented them using the composer they had originally wanted to do the score.

This was Johann Johannsson, the Icelandic genius and keyboard maestro whose previous works included the great music for The Theory Of Everything.

He died before he could begin work on Christopher Robin, aged just 48, apparently after a drug overdose.

The background to the movie is that Christopher, the older version, has become rather set in his ways and works as an efficiency manager at Winslow Luggage, spending far too long in the office and making his family feel neglected.

Director Marc Forster reckons Ewan was the perfect candidate for the main role.

“Ewan and I did a movie before, called Stay, and we knew each other very well and had been friends for years,” he says.

“He’s comedically brilliant and he’s also brilliant as a dramatic actor. Ewan has a Chaplin-esque quality with his physical comedy.”

For his part, McGregor loved the idea of doing such a film with Forster, especially as it wasn’t at all the lighthearted piece it could have been.

“I loved the way he described it,” he admits. “It didn’t sound to me like a Disney remake. The way he talked about it, it just sounded like what you see in the movie. There’s almost a darkness to it, which is surprising.”

English actress Hayley Atwell, playing Christopher’s wife, Evelyn, loves the finished work, too.

“There’s an innocence we all relate to – this childhood innocence of spending long summer days with your friends, just hanging out and not doing anything.”

Ewan has a nice little keepsake from the movie, as he reveals.

“I’ve got a teddy bear Pooh from the shoot,” he says. “I was so fond of him. I spent four months looking at his little eyes.

“I asked them, quietly, if they would make me one.”

He also believed that this kind of storyline was just what he personally needed at this stage in his life.

“I felt very much it was a timely movie for me,” admits the 47-year-old. “I felt that way before I read it, when Marc described what he wanted to do with the film, how he wanted it to feel and his belief that it was an important film for now.”

For any adult who is losing touch with their imagination, it’s just the job.

Christopher Robin is in cinemas from Friday August 17.