Brother Bear (2003)

Directors:

Aaron Blaise
Robert Walker

Writers:

Tab Murphy (screenplay) and
Lorne Cameron (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

1 November 2003 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Adventure | Family | Fantasy

Tagline:

The story of a boy who became a man by becoming a bear.

Plot:

A young Inuit hunter seeks vengence against a bear, only to be magically changed into a bear himself, and his only chance to change back is with a talkative bear cub.

Plot Keywords:

Bear | Revenge | Brotherhood | Bear Cub | Survival

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 2 wins & 17 nominations

Cast

Joaquin Phoenix	...	Kenai (voice)
Jeremy Suarez	...	Koda (voice)
Jason Raize	...	Denahi (voice)
Rick Moranis	...	Rutt (voice)
Dave Thomas	...	Tuke (voice)
D.B. Sweeney	...	Sitka (voice)
Joan Copeland	...	Tanana (voice)
Michael Clarke Duncan	...	Tug (voice)
Harold Gould	...	Old Denahi (voice)
Paul Christie	...	Ram #1 (voice)
Danny Mastrogiorgio	...	Ram #2 (voice) (as Daniel Mastrogiorgio)
Estelle Harris	...	Old Lady Bear (voice)
Greg Proops	...	Male Lover Bear (voice)
Pauley Perrette	...	Female Lover Bear (voice)
Darko Cesar	...	Foreign Croatian Bear (voice)

Also Known As:

Bears (USA) (working title)
Tierra de osos (USA: Spanish title)

Runtime:

85 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Inuktitut | Serbo-Croatian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Iceland:L | Germany:o.Al. | Finland:K-3 | Malaysia:U | South Korea:All | Portugal:M/4 | Australia:G | Brazil:Livre | Philippines:G | Singapore:G | Spain:T | Switzerland:8 (canton of Zurich) | UK:U | USA:G (certificate #40113)

Filming Locations:

Orlando, Florida, USA

Company:

Walt Disney Feature Animation

Trivia:

In the various vignettes during the end credits, Kenai is shown drawing a crude stick figure on a rock while little Koda has painted "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" (1884-1886) of Georges Seurat.

Goofs:

Factual errors: In the opening scene, the DVD subtitles identify the narrator as Sitka, when it is actually Denahi. To make things even more confusing, Denahi says "This is a story from long ago, when the great mammoths still roamed our lands", whereas the main story takes place during his lifetime and mammoths are clearly too plentiful to have disappeared so quickly.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Denahi as an Old Man: This is a story from long ago, when the great mammoths still roamed our lands. It's the story of my two brothers and me. When the three of us were young, we were taught that the world is full of magic. The source of this magic is the ever-changing lights that dance across the sky...

Movie Connections:

References Finding Nemo (2003)

Soundtrack:

Welcome

Disney's last animated classic

Having (I think) seen all the Disney animated features, I would have to say that 'Brother Bear' is the finest Disney feature since 'The Fox and the Hound' - which is to say the best around 25 years. It's a shame, and a bit ironic, that this sudden return to form should happen now, after a string of 90's movies which were nearly all good, but rarely brilliant; and on the cusp of the death of the classical 'hand drawn' style of animation from the people who invented the animated feature.

At first I had misgivings. Particularly when I heard Inuit using valley girl phrases - but these reservations disappear quickly enough (as indeed, do the Inuit characters).

Briefly, 'Brother Bear' is about a young Inuit man who rejects his totem ('the Bear of Love'), and goes so far as to kill a bear which he somewhat erroneously blames for the death of his friend. He is then magically transformed into a bear, and the rest of the film... doesn't really matter at this stage: I don't want to spoil it.

There are only a few minor faults which prevent this from scoring a 10: the moose and ram characters are really pretty dispensable, but they don't take up much screen time. Koda, the bear cub, elicited a bit of an 'oh, no' response from at first, but he grows on you fast.

The animation, as you would expect, is well ahead of the field (at least in the 'classical' style). While it isn't perhaps quite as eye-popping and panoramic as 'The Lion King', I think this only goes to show that good storytelling will win out over superficial eye-candy covering a third-hand script.

The final scenes of the movie are genuinely surprising (there is a sort of stock surprise ending, followed by something I really didn't see coming), and at the same time, it's genuine lump in the throat stuff - something Disney seemed to have been a bit shy about lately with films like 'Atlantis'. They shouldn't be. They do it well.

I've enjoyed nearly all of Disney's prolific output of the past ten years, but this is the pick of the bunch, IMO. It's not perfect, but if this had been the film which Disney's animation dept had bowed out with, it would have been a fine swansong.