Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie is pretty much a direct sequel to Pooh’s Heffalump Movie. It’s a sequel in that they don’t introduce Lumpy because they just assumed you watched it and know this character. I begrudgingly watch the Heffalump movie after the sequel and while I thought the Heffalump movie was alright, I loathed the Halloween movie.

Plot is it’s Lumpy’s first Halloween and Roo and pals are teaching him all about it. Tigger tells of story about some made up creature called the Gobloon that turns creatures into “Jaggedy-Lanterns.” Lumpy gets scared, so Roo and him venture to find it and make wishes or something because Pooh ate all the candy.

At the 20 minute mark because the screenwriters relieved that they don’t have their Pooh quota of screen time, Roo tells Lumpy a story about Piglet learning not to be scared, a lesson which I‘m sure he will forget. Lumpy and Roo set-up a trap but they run away when they think they hear the Gobloon. Lumpy gets his foot caught while trying to get away after tripping over a wheel-barrow of pumpkins and Roo leaves him to die like a jerk.

Lumpy does managed to get away and the two are separated. When Roo goes back for Lumpy he just sees a Lumpy Jack-o-lantern and thinks that the Gobloon tried him to a “Jaggedy-Lanterns.” Lumpy ends up in the Gobloon trap and the gang thinks they caught the Gobloon. Roo then wishes for Lumpy back. They then find Lumpy in the trap and have the best Halloween ever. At Roo’s house we learn that Kanga made Jack-o-lanterns of everyone but Lumpy’s got lost.

The first big issue with the movie seems to be in most Pooh movies, the Flashback story. In Springtime for Roo the flashback story had a precedent on the larger story. In this move, yeah it makes sense but it didn’t work with the larger story and just stalled the movie because without it would have been 40 minutes and cut the memorable character pretty much out.

Which bring me to my next Point, Roo can not and should not carry a Winnie the Pooh movie. I’m not sure what the rational behind this was. I think perhaps that the screenwriters feel that Pooh is too much a grown-up for kids to identify with so they use Roo.

It’s a very classic misconceptions of how grown-up think kids work in relations to movies. Roo should either be a minor character or act as straight man if Christopher Robin is too busy with school. He should not be going on adventures without Pooh and the gang. It worked in Pooh’s Heffalump movie because Roo was a counterpoint to Pooh but here it’s just stupid. Pooh should not be a minor character in his movies.

Then there is Lumpy. Lumpy gave me a bit of a flashback to Lumpy Space Princess, LSP, from Adventure Time but other than the name, Lumpy, and being purple they have little in common except that they annoy me.

Lumpy didn’t annoy me in the Heffalump movie but in the Halloween movie oh was he annoying. They pretty much killed his character in this. In the Heffalump movie he was cute and fun and got scared once but I wouldn’t characterize him as big coward wimp.

In the Halloween movie he was a whiny wimp. It was not endearing or cute. Piglet has the monopoly on being scared you can’t give that trait to another character and make the flashback justify it. Still hate the flashback tactic and I hate Lumpy in this movie which makes me sad since I have affinity for Elephant-like creatures.

Despite being a Halloween movie with a Heffalump in it, Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie fails by all counts. It’s boring, annoying and stall. The animation is bad by sequel standards and it throws the memorable characters aside for boring and annoying children. I really hated this movie.