"The wonderful thing about tiggers is that tiggers are wonderful things. Their tops are made of rubber, their bottoms are made of springs ... But the very most wonderful thing about tiggers is I'm the only one!" an exuberant Tigger bounces into action, tumbling to the ground the other ho-hum, yet lovable, characters in Christopher Robin's Hundred Acre Wood.

Pooh's troop of animated stuffed animals being either too busy or just too darned laid-back to bounce with him, Tigger finds himself direly lonely. "I'm the one and onlyest one ... how I wish there was a double or a triple of me."

Fluttering to help, Owl goes out on a limb by sending Tigger into the cold wintry forest in search of his family tree.

While Tigger is innately effervescent, the rest of the cast (save for a spirited Roo-boy) is rather lackluster in spite of their cute black-button eyes and occasional charming remarks. The washed out watercolor look of Pooh's woods is beautiful in its own way, but never was meant to carry the thunder and excitement we've more recently come to expect from Disney with it's thickly rich animated films like "Tarzan" and "Toy Story2." Though this one is Tigger's movie, it's still Winnie's world and in defiance of one wild cat's enthusiastic attempts, the picture remains soft on color, action, and in the end quite wordy.

Nowhere in the film is this point better made than at the start and end of a truly contrasting musical interjection. In the middle of the production, Tigger is given an outstanding Broadway number in which he dreams/sings his family history in a collage of American culture and European art recreated entirely with Tigger faces. The texture of the production sparks here, it firework-jerks our Eeyore-lazy hearts from their calm and stands out from the rest of the picture like an orange-striped cat in the snow. It's wonderful.

In all fairness, Pooh sings a sweet little "lulla-bee" calming nasty buzzing bees into a hypnotic slumber, so that he might dip into that luscious honey sapping from a tree that could have been Tigger's family tree. The film would have benefited with more songs of this golden syrup-dipity.

I also enjoyed the snow rendering, which flickers in flakes of unique and changing shapes. And though I'm no longer innocent enough to enjoy the tame and many sight gags; your younger children might. However, I did get a kick out of Tigger's word misinterpretations and blunders. In one instance, after forgetting to offer refreshments to his guests he blurts, "Where are my mannerisms?" And then, in a party mood, mistakenly almost asks Eeyore, "Or how about a game of pin the tail on the do..." Jim Cummings does a smashing job of Tigger-talk and remarkably speaks for Pooh too - vocally and in song.

In the end, the tender heartwarming climax and resolution may just choke you up a bit in the Adam's apple - as they did I.