The Bear

An Animated tale in the style of Raymond Briggs' "The Snowman" and "Father Christmas", This tale is about a girl named tilly who visits the zoo and accidentally drops her teddy bear into the polar bear exhibit. Crying herself to sleep she wakes to find the polar bear in her room with he teddy bear. Tilly cares for the polar bear and hides it from her parents, which is no small feet. But he call of the wild bear constallation takes her on an adventure accross the night sky.

This is a must have Briggs' movie, all the charm and warmth of the first two animations are contained inside. Children and adults watch spellbound through another half hour of music and storytelling.

My best to the author and producers, please make more.

I love "the Snowman" and "Father Christmas", they are timeless Christmas classics. "The Bear" is a simple, haunting and sublime seasonal film, not quite as good as the other two but an essential nonetheless. The story is simple, and so are the characters particularly the warm and loving bear but very effective. The animation is beautiful, very similar to the animation from "The Snowman" and "Father Christmas" and to the illustrations from the book. The music has a haunting and dreamlike quality, with the end song sung beautifully by a young Charlotte Church.

Overall, I highly recommend "The Bear". 10/10 Bethany Cox

THE BEAR, huge and gentle - which makes its way from the London Zoo into the bedroom of a lonely little girl - takes her on a magical journey across the Wintertime landscape.

Haunting & evocative, this lovely little animated film - told entirely without narration or dialogue, is a most fitting successor to author Raymond Briggs' earlier triumph The Snowman, to which, at one point, it pays subtle homage. After enjoying the broad comedy of the Polar Visitor trying to hide in the proper English home, the viewer is swept into the Northern sojourn which fulfills the Bear's quest.

Howard Blake's score propels the fanciful images onward; the final song is sung by Charlotte Church.

THE BEAR, an enchanting 30-minute animation about a young girl's relationship with a polar bear that escapes from the local zoo, is very much a spiritual follow-up to that timeless Raymond Briggs classic, THE SNOWMAN. The two productions look and feel very similar to each other and, while THE SNOWMAN has the edge, THE BEAR comes close to reaching the same level of quality.

As usual, there's far more going on than meets the eye, something that makes these Briggs stories suitable for adult viewers as well as the kids. On the face of it, it's simply a humorous tale about an unlikely relationship, but underneath it's all about friendship, being comfortable in your own skin, the tribulations of finding one's place in society, mysticism and nature versus technology and progress.

Needless to say it's also touching, thought-provoking and magical, with expert, hand-drawn animation and beautifully realised characters.

This film doesn't quite have the structure that the films of the Snowman/Father Christmas/Snowdog trilogy do. It's more of an interpretive dance than a story and that probably makes it quite artistic and beautiful for some. Children may enjoy it for it's simplicity and pretty style and without thinking too hard about it, but as an adult I find that it poses a lot of questions.

Firstly, it's unclear how the Bear got to her house? I'm sure the zoo would have noticed it's absence and I'd like to have seen him sniff out her location to give a tad more information to start.

Also, the music could have been a little bit less like The Snowman in the same way that the 'Superman', 'Star Wars' and 'Indiana Jones' themes are all a bit similar. It kind of took me out of the story as I tried to remember which bit I was recognising from the other festive favourite and which scene it came from.

As I say though, if you're just watching it to show your child a special little picture of fun and adventure and can get past the music issue (Maybe you haven't seen The Snowman at least 300 times), then it's a nice piece, but I tend to want a little bit more, even for a children's film, as they are an important way to teach them new things. I'm not sure this shares much of anything.

319.63/1000.