Full disclosure: I am not a regular viewer of Doc McStuffins.
While I am familiar with the character and her world, I am looking at this purely as a Winnie the Pooh fan. There are major spoilers for this episode, if that is something that concerns you, as the plot is pretty self-explanatory.
I would like to first discuss the good in this episode. The best part of the episode was the initial interactions between the Doc McStuffins characters and Winnie the Pooh's friends. The musical numbers were not amazing, but enjoyable. Pooh and Tigger's personalities were portrayed perfectly. I very much enjoyed the points when they went back to 2D animation and the characters looked fantastic.
Now for what I did not like about the episode. Tigger's design was a big problem for me. It is such a departure from any version that has come before that it was jarring and very distracting during the episode. The same can be said for the portrayal of Christopher Robin. I feel he and all the characters looked much better in the My Friends Tigger and Pooh television series. I do not understand why they did not just use those designs for all the Pooh characters as I felt they were higher quality. This also would have cut down on animation/development costs on this episode.
I also take issue with how Eeyore was portrayed. He had some lines that seemed very out of character including admitting that social pressure was guiding his actions. I also disliked the way Piglet was portrayed when interacting with Lambie. Piglet has always been very worried about everything and never intentionally played up his being cute. Lambie is a very different type of character and they attempted to make Piglet more like Lambie, I think to the disadvantage of Piglet.
I also found it very strange how Christopher Robin refers to all of the Pooh friends as toys, and how the Pooh friends refer to themselves as toys.
I also feel that they tried to force certain relationships, such as the connection between Christopher Robin and Doc McStuffins. Christopher Robin was a very small part of the episode and there is not time for any real connection to develop.
I was also left wondering many times during the episode where Rabbit, Owl, Kanga, and Roo were. They were never mentioned and no explanation was given. I would imagine that Roo would want to help in finding Pooh.
In summary I felt that “Into the Hundred Acre Wood!” was a missed opportunity, but is enjoyable none the less. If you are a Doc McStuffins fan, definitely give this a watch. If you are a Winnie the Pooh fan, you may not like the way some of the characters are portrayed, but you are so deprived of content that you should probably watch this.
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