The only question the cast and crew of "The Tigger Movie" have for Walt Disney Pictures officials is, "What took you so long?"Though movies featuring Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and the other creatures of the Hundred Acre Woods have been popping up on video every so often, it's been 17 years since they've been seen on the big screen ("Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore" being the last of the Pooh mini-features to reach movie theaters).
That's not nearly often enough for the songwriting Sherman brothers, who provided the words and music for the most memorable songs from the Pooh movies, including "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers."
"As sweet and lovable as they are, we need these characters now more than ever," Richard Sherman said during a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "They're like our old friends, and what they can teach us about life and being kind to each other is very valuable. There's not a lot of other wholesome entertainment like this out there."
Utah actor Ken Sansom, who provides the voice for the animated character Rabbit in the new film, certainly agrees with that. "The effect that this whole cartoon series has had on young minds is amazing," he said. "It's about the only thing aimed at them that doesn't have any violence or any suggestion of sexual material. It's so pure. That's a wonderful thing to see nowadays."
Like the other Pooh movies, "The Tigger Movie" features many of the characters from A.A. Milne's beloved short stories. The feature-length cartoon also has a message at its center -- namely, the importance of family, as realized by Tigger (the voice of Jim Cummings), who is hoping to find others of his kind.
"It's a very beautiful, touching story," Sansom said. "And I think that's something we can all relate to, feeling alone and not wanting to be that way."
Needless to say, he and the Sherman brothers jumped at the opportunity to contribute to the movie -- especially the Shermans, who hadn't written a song for a Disney feature since 1971's "Bedknobs and Broomsticks."
"We hadn't worked for Disney in years, so when they called us to write songs for one of their movies -- much less a Winnie the Pooh film -- we were thrilled," Richard Sherman said.
"But as excited as we were to be asked to come back, what really sold us was the idea of staying true to (studio founder Walt Disney's) vision of what the series was," he added. "My biggest fear was that they were going to change the characters, or bring in completely new ones that no one would recognize."
But director/co-screenwriter Jun Falkenstein assured them that the characters would remain intact and that the animators were going to replicate the original art style -- with only a few innovations related to technological improvements.
"She convinced us that she was on the same page as we were -- that this was going to have the same characters we all know and love. And that was certainly good enough for me," Robert Sherman said.
So in a writing frenzy, the Shermans wrote six new songs for the movie, including "Your Heart Will Lead You Home," which they composed with pop star Kenny Loggins.
"Kenny was very easy to work with," Robert Sherman said. "We knew we were working with a kindred soul when we watched an early version of the film together, and here we were, three grown men crying their eyes out. I think he really understood what we needed to get out of the song after that."
Another person that seems to "get" the film is Sansom, a veteran performer who appeared in such movies as "The Sting" and "Funny Lady," and who started his career as a broadcaster on KSL radio in the 1950s.
He has been providing his voice talents to the character for more than a dozen years, most prominently in the "New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" television series and such multimedia things as educational CD-ROMs and computer games. (Junius Matthews, the original voice of Rabbit, died in 1978, and various actors tried out for the part before Sansom landed it for good in 1988.)
In fact, Sansom said he is very pleased with the way things turned out, though he noted that, out of the major voice cast members, he is the only one who doesn't get to sing.
"That's a minor complaint, I guess," Sansom said. "You can't have everything, and I'm just grateful that they've let me play such a wonderful character. He doesn't always get the most to do, but, oh, what he does with the time he gets." (As Rabbit, Sansom does, however, get to sing the tune "When the Love Bug Bites" in "Winnie the Pooh, A Valentine for You," a direct-to-video movie.)
Sansom does have one other regret -- namely that it didn't turn out to be "The Rabbit Movie."
"Well, you know, he has so much charisma-ma," he said, slipping into character. "I think he'd be a natural to star in his own film, don't you?"