Scorsese it isn’t, but sometimes you need a little sugar to lighten things up.

Not every movie-going experience has to be a soul-wrenching search for humanity in a bleak wilderness of freakishness and despair.

Or does it?

Childish fare though it might be, “The Tigger Movie” has something of an edge to it.

First off, the central character is Tigger, the most annoying of all the Winnie the Pooh clan.

With all the bouncing, laziness and trash-talking this guy does, he certainly deserves the rep he gets.

Frankly, it is a surprise to this reviewer that Tigger didn’t get his comeuppance long ago in the form of banishment from Hundred-Acre Wood.

Let him see what life is like out there in the cruel, hard world after a few years of wandering from town to town begging for scraps, the punk.

In a more unkind world, his speech impediment would also be noted for its annoyance factor, but we must overlook this in our enlightened times.

The basic story is one of man’s inhumanity to man and the subsequent guilt we feel for sticking it to someone even if they really deserved it.

Sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind, but when you are a stuffed animal, you are working on a whole other level.

This film was originally slated for straight-to-video release and was later upgraded for the theater, which is too bad really because, judged as a video, it is okay.

Unfortunately, when you go to the theater, you expect a little something more than computer-generated backgrounds and crisper colors.

You want a theater-sized plot to justify the trip and, sadly, “Tigger” doesn’t bounce that high.

The film begins as Pooh and his gang of rabble-rousing cronies are busy trying to get ready for winter, but Tigger just wants to play.

He cares not for the impending doom that could result from poor shelter and low provisions. He has never heard of the Donner party in his rose-tinted world where wasting the day away is acceptable.

Or perhaps he is actually looking forward to a hard winter so he can thin down this motley herd of friends.

Stuffed or not, that Piglet would make a fine friend in severe weather. The gang tells Tigger to take a hike and go find some other Tiggers to play with.

Of course, herein lies the irony and the bittersweet tragedy of the film’s primary premise — there is only one Tigger.

Tigger goes in search of what he cannot find and during the course of his adventure and the film’s many musical numbers, eventually learns an important and ultimately modern lesson about life: You’ve got to take your family where you can get it.

Disney deserves credit for staying true to A.A. Milne’s style, and not updating this timeless classic.

The last thing in the world anyone needs to see is a bastardized version of Pooh doing “Calm Like a Bomb” ala Rage Against the Machine or Tigger rapping.

It is good to know that in a world that moves faster than the speed of light sometimes, that something as old-fashioned and traditional as Winnie the Pooh can remain untouched and sacred even to the notoriously heavy-handed folks at Disney who crank out unnecessarily modernized versions of other people’s classics faster than you can say ka-ching.

This film is no brain-teaser.

Anyone with a grade school education can figure out in the first five minutes how this plot is going to resolve itself.

But it does work on two levels.

If you don’t have that grade school education yet or know someone else who doesn’t, you will get to relive the joy of youth watching Pooh and the gang. There is nothing so sweet as introducing a child to something they will love that you also hold dear to your heart.

Or go by yourself in the afternoon when no one is looking and pretend you are 6 years old again.

Take your insulin along because this is, if nothing else, an extremely saccharine movie.

2 1/2 Stars

Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs