“Hackneyed, but Still Heartwarming”

I’ve never been a big fan of talking animal pictures, but Disney has an uncanny knack for making such films not only palatable, but also feasible in most respects. The moment I learned Disney’s Dinosaur (2000) was going to feature talking prehistoric creatures, I thought for sure it would be a flop…I was wrong. Though produced by a different studio, Ice Age, also featuring talking animals from the distant past, surpassed my expectations as well.

So along traipses Brother Bear, an unassuming animal animated feature, which has been reported as the final traditionally hand-drawn animated feature film for Disney (is this true?). Though a bit heavy on the “ancestral spirits,” Brother Bear is heartwarming and has a good message.

Set in the Pacific Northwest, long before Europeans settled in the Americas, Brother Bear is the story of three brothers: Sitka (oldest), Denahi and Kenai (voiced by Joaquin Phoenix). Kenai needs to fulfill a ritual in order to become a man—his totem is the bear of love (a particularly prissy symbol for a young man, which Denahi immediately and mercilessly ridicules him for). One day, while the three brothers are out in the wilderness, a bear shows up, and in a sacrificial act, Sitka draws the bear away from his brothers and plunges to his death. Enraged at his loss, Kenai hunts down the bear and kills it. In that moment, the spirit of Sitka turns Kenai into a bear. After the initial shock, Kenai begrudgingly befriends a cub named Koda. Two twists occur near the end of the film: a vengeful Denahi (who thinks he’s lost two brothers) is stalking Kenai, and Kenai discovers that he was the one who orphaned Koda when he killed the young bear’s mother.

There’s enough Disney magic here to qualify Brother Bear as a success, but it doesn’t hold a paw to Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King. Here are a few reasons why Brother Bear will never be labeled a Disney classic: 1. There are way too many recycled gags from other Disney films, especially Finding Nemo (the “I Spy” game, for instance), 2. The movie is laced with token Phil Collins tunes that contain solid lyrics, but unfortunately lend the feeling that this has all been done before…and it has, 3. Plot devices are hackneyed in Brother Bear. We’ve seen a beast become a man (the order is reversed here). We’ve had a “rite of passage” film with a lion before. We’ve had an overabundance of hilarious sidekicks. The list goes on and on, ad nauseam.

On the positive side, the animation, which at times resembles an oil painting, is really quite good; I especially liked the gimmicks they did inside the glacier and the colorful aurora that had ancestral spirits swimming around in it. The most memorable element of the movie, undoubtedly, is the pair of moose (not meece). Voiced by Strange Brew companions, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, the moose brothers are downright hilarious and lend the movie some much-needed comic relief. Without the two moose, the movie might have been unbearable.

Rating: 2 1/2

Tags: Animation, Adventure, Family