In meeting a young, playful Heffalump named Lumpy, Roo soon learns an important lesson; Heffalumps are nothing like what he’s been told.

The heart has its reasons which reason does not understand. In times of love, this is a good thing. In times of war, less so. Back in the Hundred Acre Wood, Rabbit and the rest of the gang prepare for the worst. To catch a Heffalump, does one whistle at them, or leave haycorns in wait? Heffalumps are fierce, so the only solution is to set traps — everywhere!

The thread of the story is spun tighter, by degrees. The characters edge their way toward the realization that, while outwardly it may appear otherwise, we are all essentially the same at heart: we get scared, love honey and like to bounce. (Depending on whom you ask.) The protagonists relinquish the fearful need to control the “other,” and to lead them on a tether according to a willful sense of good and right.

I don’t want to spoil the end for those yet to see the movie, but suffice to say it involves a fair amount of on-screen trumpeting and off-screen kids clapping their happy approval.

Rabbit asks of Lumpy, in his roundabout way, “Can you ever forgive us for acting so badly?”

Heffa Nice Day
Ah, yes. Forgiveness. That’s a nice sentiment.

In the end, the inhabitants of Pooh Corner realize that Heffalumps aren’t dangerous, after all; they are simply different. What was all the fuss? Nobody had actually seen or known one, but their imagination was eager to fill in the blanks with shades of worry and doubt and fear — oh my!

Until now, the fact that Heffalumps are such awful creatures was a given. Everyone had always said so, and believed so. It was one of those unexamined assumptions that can, and often does, lead to a whole lot of smarts (which, in its way, is dumb).

As Tigger says, “False alarm — as in, never mind.”

Pooh’s Heffalump Movie — directed by Frank Nissen, written by Brian Hohlfeld and Evan Spiliotopoulos — is a cuddly condensation of a worldly prejudice. Most parents (or at least the idealized ones) hope for the best and brightest future for their children. Kanga and Mama Heffalump, in allowing their kids to play together, are probably doing more than their small part to promote good relations within the forest community, sowing the seeds for mutual well being.

Our nasty reality is that we spend untold resources and creative genius in dreaming up better and more efficient ways to keep each other at arm’s length. One wonders if it would be beneficial to spend some of that time and energy — oh, I dunno — in learning to understand and respect and (dare I say it?) love one another.

Piglet, Pooh, Tigger and Rabbit initially believe Heffalumps are something to be feared and hide from Lumpy and his mother.

This is “only a cartoon,” though, and I am sure that Disney did not intend to moralize that fear and ignorance are weapons of mass destruction — or, at least, the beginnings thereof.

All said, the screening I attended had children and adults chuckling, with tykes literally bobbing in their seats in time with the music. (Yes, there are songs.) Though, to be honest, there was one gentleman with a power-tool snore, lumbering a few rows back. (Alas, we can turn off our pagers and cell phones, but when neighboring patrons turn off, it is an interruption of a different sort.) By movie’s end, as the credits rolled, there was an audible “yaay” ascending from the kids in the crowd.

As the narrator of the movie, Pooh says, “We set out to catch Lumpy, but in the end, he captured us.” For lovers of the watercolor world of Winnie, the Pooh hits the fan in all of us.

Look for the direct-to-DVD Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween later this year. (Cue executive: “Cha-ching!”)

Greg Singer is an animation welfare advocate, eating in Los Angeles.