Back to Master List

Back to the Anime list

Brother Bear

Version: VHS

Rating: G

Length: Approx. 85 minutes 

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Suarez, Jason Raize, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, D.B. Sweeney, Joan Copeland

Synopsis:

This is a story about ancient Indians that believe in spirits. The main characters are three brothers and a baby bear. The elder brother, Sitka (D.B. Sweeney) is killed saving his brethren from a bear and this makes Kenai (Joaquin Phoenix) very angry at the bear. So he hunts it down and kills it and is promptly turned into a bear himself by his dead brother Sitka's spirit.

To put it more simply, the plot of this bear movie is the main dude, Kenai, learning that you shouldn't upset the spirits or you might be turned into an animal. Basically Kenai learns that his actions have consequences: guy gets turned into a bear for his sins; bear must make up for his sins; then decide if he wants to be human or continue his new life now that he's "enlightened."

The Review:

The main thing against this show is that there are no real surprises or originality. A lot of it is chock-full of relativistic spiritualism. There's a female shaman that hands out totems shaped like various critters. Kenai gets a love-bear at his coming-of-age party and is understandably upset, because this doesn't seem like a guy-thing. It's not cool and one of his brothers teases him about it. The totems are from the spirits and are supposed to be something that the person is to focus on. For example, Sitka is supposed to be wise or a leader or something, so he got an Eagle. Soon after that, Sitka is dead and Kenai is a bear. Kenai's other brother, Denahi, thinks that Kenai-the-bear killed Kenai-the-human. (Kind of complicated, no?)

So that thing is going on throughout the entire show. One brother, Denali is trying to kill the other, Kenai. What fun. This is rather stupid as it shows Denali as a hypocrite. He didn't want Kenai to kill the bear and now Denali is doing the same thing. The fight scenes between the two are kind of interesting since Kenai can't hurt his crazed brother, so it's more of a smack-down kind of fight.

Kenai meets some moose and tries to get their help, but they're a couple of goofs, so they're not much help. They mostly make jokes and say "eh?" a lot. One scene has them playing the "I spy" game and the only thing they ever "spy" are trees. This goes on for a couple of minutes. 

He also meets a baby bear named Koda (Jeremy Suarez) who annoys him for most of the show. Then suddenly, he loves the cub. How does this happen? Well, when the two of them are first thrown together, Koda won't quit yakking, which makes him pretty annoying. Then when Denali tries to kill Koda too, for some reason Kenai cares about him. I'm not really sure when the "love" thing happens, but it does. In one scene, Kenai is grumpy and the next, they're frolicking. 

The object of Kenai's "mission" is to get to where the lights touch the ground and Koda can take him there since it's near a fish-spawning river that the bears party at. Kenai wants to get there so he can change back into a human. (Just so you know, he found out this information from the aforementioned shaman lady that for some reason can speak bear.) You know what happens. It's so obvious. Thus I will just go on to the “stuff” section:

The Good Stuff:

 The Bad Stuff:

 Overall, this show was dumb. It's like it was made by one of Disney's competitors rather than Disney itself. The show drags some, but fortunately it's not long enough to be terrible. If you love Disney's stuff, go out and get it. However, the quality of the plot is more along the lines of their cartoon movies that go straight to video.

OVERALL SCORE: 1/2