You know something? I was looking forward to this more than I was “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.” Granted I saw the latter first, but anyone who knows me best will more than understand my sheer desire to see this one: I am a die hard Eeyore fan! I got my first Eeyore plush toy before the start of the 5th grade, and I’ve lost track of how many I have collected since; my niece told her friends I have over 3,000, but I beg to differ. To see him play such a pivotal role in “Winnie the Pooh” was a huge delight for me after seeing him get reduced to a mere cameo in “Pooh’s Hefalump Movie.”

Oh yeah, I should talk about the rest of the film as well. That “silly old bear” once again headlines the proceedings as his grumbling tummy develops a mind of its own as it uncontrollably yearns for honey. Sure enough there are beehives nearby with a wealth of Pooh’s favorite food, but the bees are understandably protective of their export. Then there’s the case of Eeyore’s missing tail which has everyone giving him another which (to put it mildly) doesn’t exactly compare. To cap it all off, this classic gang mistakenly believes that Christopher Robin has been kidnapped by an evil monster known as the “Backson” (see the movie, you’ll understand).

For some reason, watching Pooh hurriedly pursuing that sticky substance kept reminding me of Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream” with its characters becoming increasingly desperate for heroin or whatever their minds craved more than their bodies. But that’s just me. I somehow doubt the animators at Walt Disney had any intention of making a G rated movie reminding you of one of the most seriously disturbing films ever made.

“Winnie the Pooh” brings the 100 Acre Wood back to traditional hand drawn animation, something of a rarity these days. While the characters would have looked fantastic with computer animation a la Pixar, doing things the old fashioned way was the right choice. The “Winnie the Pooh” films and shorts have been long since relegated to the Disney channel and direct to DVD realm, and this brought about a drop in quality. But seeing Pooh bear and company on the big screen is a terrific reminder of why we grew up loving these characters in the first place.

Jim Cummings once again provides the voice for Pooh bear as well as Tigger, and he captures the distinctive voices of each character perfectly. Travis Oates gets the innocent stuttering of Piglet down to perfection, and late night talk show host Craig Ferguson makes Owl as jolly as he is oblivious to his own pomposity. Rabbit on the other hand has always been the most anal of A.A. Milne’s characters, so I thank Tom Kenny for making him more likably bearable than he typically is. As for Christopher Robin, Jack Boulter gives a strong British accent and still sounds like a girl at times (just like the actor who voiced him in “Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore”).

Now back to the good part! Eeyore has been a great source of dry humor, and his brand of it is on fully display here. Watching him try on the tails others have given him (Pooh’s clock doesn’t quite do the trick) should at the very least put a smile on your face even if it doesn’t on Eeyore’s. One of the movie’s most hilarious moments comes when Tigger trains him to be the second Tigger, leading to a montage that I would love to say (but can’t quite get myself to believe) would put Rocky to shame. Bud Luckey, who delighted us all with his great animated shorts on “Sesame Street,” memorably voices Eeyore with all his gloominess and reduced expectations in life.

One great addition to this particular version of Winnie the Pooh is of Zooey Deschanel. She doesn’t appear in this movie, but she does sing many of its songs including the classic opening track which introduces Christopher Robin’s friends. Her voice is lovely and it also has a whimsical quality which makes her contributions to this soundtrack all the more wonderful. While the songs by Robert and Kristin Anderson-Lopez aren’t as memorable as anything you heard in “Beauty and the Beast” or “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut,” they fit the material nicely without indulging in cringe-inducing cheesiness.

By bringing Pooh and his friends back to basics, “Winnie the Pooh” really proves to be a wonderfully innocent and nostalgic stroll to the stories our parents read to us at one time or another. It’s the perfect family movie to see this summer even over the more popular (and ridiculously maligned) “Cars 2.” Not once does it boil things down to the lowest common denominator of an audience, and it is a rare piece of cinematic innocence in a world filled with loud explosions and seriously crappy 3D effects. It’s a mere 69 minutes long, but there is more story to this than its running time might suggest (BTW, stick through the end credits).

Now let’s get Eeyore’s name in the title of the next one! Tigger and Piglet both had enough charisma to get a headliner’s status above Winnie the Pooh, so you can’t convince me that Eeyore can’t. It’s not like Owl, Kanga or Roo could upstage him anyway. And regardless of what Tina Fey and Seth Meyers said on “Saturday Night Live,” Eeyore did not commit suicide. As to whether auto-erotic asphyxiation was involved, I have no comment.

EEYORE MOVIE FOR 2012!

* * * ½ out of * * * *

“There is no better moment than this moment, when we're anticipating the actual moment itself. All of the moments that lead up to the actual moment are truly the best moments. Those are the moments that are filled with good times. Those are the moments in which you are able to think that it is going to be perfect, when the moment actually happens. But, the moment is reality, and reality always kinda sucks!”

-Lewis Black

I put that quote up above because it more or less symbolizes what I feel about the over promotion Disney did for the long awaited sequel to “Tron”: The company overhyped it to an alarming degree, making several different movie trailers, spending a good three years promoting it to no end. With this kind of marketing, many will go in thinking that “Tron: Legacy” will be one of the greatest movies ever made.

As for myself, I weary of the hype and try to go into most movies (particularly ones like these) with no expectations whatsoever. In fact, I think it’s better to watch most films with the lowest expectations possible. With hype that has greeted movies like this one or the “Star Wars” prequels or even “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” it is oh so easy to be incredibly disappointed by the finished product. Nothing ever does come out as well as it does in our own minds.

Well, reality may suck, but I didn’t think “Tron: Legacy” did. I walked in expecting a fun time, tickled to death that Disney actually had the balls to make a sequel to a movie that was not a big box office success to begin with. At the very least, this sequel which has been in the making for 28 years is really more of a continuation of what came before it. What it may lack in a fully coherent storyline it more than makes up for with amazing visual effects, a fantastic score by Daft Punk, and a pair of great performances from the always reliable (and no longer underappreciated) Jeff Bridges.

So here’s the story behind “Tron: Legacy”; after saying goodnight to his son Sam, Kevin Flynn rides off to Encom to work on a new digital frontier that will revolutionize the world of technology the way we all see it. Instead, he is soon reported as to have disappeared without a trace. Shift to a good 20 or so years later, and Sam has become a rebellious young kid with strong technology skills he gleefully uses to thwart the executives at Encom who look to profit and exploit Flynn’s work, the same work that he wanted to make available to us all without putting a price tag on it.

Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, also returning from the original) comes to Sam’s domicile one night informing him that he got a page from his dad the other night, and that it came from a line at Flynn’s Arcade which has been shut down for 20 years. Sam ends up going into the arcade to see what’s what, and we all know what happens from there. Sam gets sucked into “the grid” the same way his father was, and is forced to fight for his life by hurling discs and racing light cycles like no one else.

The premise behind “Tron: Legacy” is actually quite interesting when you think about it: Kevin Flynn ends up developing a more advanced version of his Clu program (who appeared in the first movie) that of course looks exactly like him. Together, they work to create the perfect system that could bring about a new kind of life form never before thought possible. But somewhere along the line, Clu grows resentful and comes to see a world of perfection far more differently than his creator, and he soon turns against Flynn, making himself the ruler of all programs. As a result, Flynn ends up being trapped in “the grid” with no way out.

Throughout, we watch as Clu coldly eliminates those programs that do not meet his ridiculously high standards. It’s an interesting Frankenstein motif in how a creation runs amuck despite the master’s best intentions (and we all know where that leads to). It also reminded me of a line from “Star Trek: First Contact” which the Borg Queen said to Data as she held him captive:

“You’re an imperfect being created by an imperfect being. Finding your weakness is only a matter of time.”

The visual effects are unsurprisingly amazing, and they clearly reflect just how far technology has come since 1983. This time, they are much more fluid to where not everything is shown going in a straight line, and this gives the action scenes far more friction than they had in the original (not that I want to take away from that one). The use of dark and neon like colors doesn’t feel at all dated, and the costumes have been given a much needed upgrade. There’s no more of those bulky suits those red guards of Sark and the MCP had, and those looked like something which barely survived the late 70’s. The digital world presented here is a dark one which is very un-Disney like, and it reminds me of the brief time the company got more serious and made more memorable movies like “Tron” and “Never Cry Wolf.”

You can also count on a bunch of easter eggs throughout that pay homage to “Tron” and the characters that inhabited it like Dumont played by the late Bernard Hughes. Some locations are revisited, and some infamous lines are repeated without being too showy. It can be fun revisiting the past even if it will never be quite the same.

By having the story focus on Flynn’s son, it seemed like Disney was desperately trying to court the youth demographics and would have been happy to put any teen or young adult heartthrob into the role. Garrett Hedlund, however, turns out to be quite good and holds his own with Jeff Bridges. It’s not a great performance, but he does do solid work here and keeps his character from becoming some annoyingly whiny brat whose daddy issues get the best of him. Garrett does however have the disadvantage of having to utter some of the movie’s cheesiest lines like:

“This isn’t happening.”

“This can’t be good.”

Now when people say stuff like that, I can’t help but roll my eyes. Garrett’s success here comes from the fact that he kept me from doing that.

Another actor I enjoyed watching in “Tron: Legacy” was Olivia Wilde who played the warrior program Quorra. She has a strong and engaging presence here, and her role as a Data-like figure eager to learn more about the real world leads to some of the movie’s more intimate moments as well as some of its funniest. And yes, she does kick major ass in the action scenes, easily derezzing those evil programs without breaking a sweat.

But one actor I truly got a kick out of watching was the great Michael Sheen who plays Castor, the owner of the End Of The Line Club in Tron City. Stealing every scene he is in, Michael holds nothing back as he gleefully hams it up as the life of the party, completely unbound by soulless machinery at his disposal. We never really did see a program like this in the original “Tron,” did we?

But of course, we have to acknowledge Jeff Bridges who will always remain one of my all time favorite movie actors. Jeff’s performance here reminded of just how good he was in the original in that he never let the special effects overwhelm his character of Kevin Flynn. Even though he was probably acting much of the time against a green screen, he makes himself feel like part of the reality, almost completely making us forget that he was acting with practically nothing to begin with during the making of this visual effects heavy film. Many other actors would probably be driven nuts by not having much to work with, but never Jeff.

Oh, and if you listen close enough, there is a line designed to instantly remind you of his infamous role in “The Big Lebowski.” Seriously, you’ll know it when it comes!

Yes, the story does have plot holes and some wooden dialogue, but so did the original. Thankfully though, none of it is as puke inducing as any words George Lucas ever put to paper in recent years! “Tron: Legacy” does also get a bit too slowed down by exposition which could have been shortened some. All the same, I’m glad that the writers didn’t just get lazy and bring back the Master Control Program (MCP) as if it was never defeated back in 1983. Most sequels these days seem to regurgitate the original, but the filmmakers clearly had more in mind this time around.

As far as I know, this is Joseph Kosinski’s feature film directing debut. In the past, he has received much acclaim for the “Mad World” commercial for the video game Gears Of War, and IMDB has him slated to direct the remake of “The Black Hole” (oh please!). For my money, he does a much better job of blending actors with special effects than George Lucas did with those “Star Wars” prequels. While he may need to work in humanizing the characters a bit more in these visual effects spectacles, Joseph does well in keeping “Tron: Legacy” from becoming overly-cheesy or infinitely monotonous.

And of course, I do want to acknowledge the soundtrack by Daft Punk. Although my first choice for scoring this film would have been Hybrid, Daft Punk does seem like a perfect fit for this kind of material which serves as their first official film score. Many I know expressed disappointment over the CD of their soundtrack because they felt it sounded nothing like their albums, but that’s ridiculous when you think about it. Like the brilliant score Wendy Carlos did for the first film, their music is a strong mix of orchestral and electronic elements which does a great job of bringing more humanism and emotion to a wholly technological world. To simply create a score of back to back dance tunes that would bring out a sweat in all of us would not have worked.

I don’t know, maybe I am not being hard enough on “Tron: Legacy.” Could it have been a better film? Sure, but why can’t we just be happy that Disney took the big risk of making a sequel to it? For what it is, I enjoyed it a lot and admired the fact that it was made by people who respected what came before it. 28 years is a massively long time to wait for any sequel, and recapturing the magic of its predecessor is usually asking for far too much. “Tron: Legacy” however was worth the wait for me, and I would certainly be open to seeing it again while it is still in theaters.

Still, I have to wonder, can human beings really exist in a digital world even though they are users instead of programs. Can a program actually be brought into the real world? Oh who cares! I had fun!

End of line.

***½ out of ****

Incidentally, I did see the movie in 3D, and the effects are quite good. There is a note at the start of it saying that some scenes were shot intentionally in 2D, and the 3D really doesn’t kick in until Sam gets inside the world of the computer.