Brother Bear: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

(Originally published 2003)

Walt Disney's “Brother Bear” is that increasing rarity, an animated feature that eschews computer animation in favor of the traditional, hand-painted, 2-D variety. It’s almost a museum piece.

Adhering faithfully to the Disney formula and lifting liberally from a number of their more successful movies—“The Lion King,” “Bambi” and “Pocahontas,” to name a few--the movie is hardly as fresh as Snow White’s laundry. Still, in directors Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker’s hands, it does have its moments, some of which are thrilling and moving.

The opening song by Tina Turner, “Look Through My Eyes Great Spirits,” is especially strong. It has momentum and power, a welcome reprieve from the rote, indistinguishable songs sandwiched onto the soundtrack by Phil Collins, who does his damndest to channel Elton John’s work in “The Lion King.”

Set in the Pacific Northwest, the movie takes place thousands of years in the past.

There, in a spiritual ceremony set high above a mountaintop aglow with the Northern Lights, young Native American Kenai (voice of Joaquin Phoenix) is on the verge of receiving what his two older brothers, Sitka (D.B. Sweeney) and Denahi (Jason Raize), have already received before him: a special totem that will mark his transition from boy to man.

Unfortunately for Kenai, the totem he receives is in the shape of a bear, which he dislikes. Worse, he learns from the shaman Tanana (Joan Copeland) that his quest in becoming a man doesn’t involve conquering the world with brute force and machismo, as he’d like, but to find love in all things.

From this, a dramatic series of events ensue: In an effort to prove his manhood, Kenai sets out to kill the mother grisly bear who steals his basket of fish and then, in turn, his brother Denahi.

In an unnervingly well-done scene, he succeeds and, almost immediately, is summoned by the Great Spirit and transformed into a bear himself. It’s his journey back to human form that the film follows, with Kenai reluctantly bonding with an orphaned baby bear named Koda (Jeremy Suarez) and, along the way, two loony moose, Rutt (Rick Moranis) and Tuke (Dave Thomas).

This is a looser work than the studio’s last movie, “Finding Nemo,” and it’s meant to be. As such, its story doesn’t feel pressed to compete with the animated detail offered by a super-charged, Pentium-powered chip.

It chooses its moments wisely to fully reveal the power of hand-painted animation, such as in the way the sun dapples unexpectedly upon a face as it moves from the shadows or when an avalanche erupts onscreen with devastating success. Moments and scenes like this give “Brother Bear” an identity it otherwise would have lacked, which is perfect since finding one’s identity is exactly what the story is about.

Grade: B