Disney Daze: Brother Bear

Brother Bear (2003)

Disney Animated Classic Number 44

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

Directed by: Aaron Blaise & Robert Walker

Rating: ★★★

Throughout my Disney Daze journey, I’ve see a huge variety of different types of Disney animated classics. Musicals. Fantasies. Sci-fi. Gothic Horror. Fairy Tales. But none of them, not a single one, has been as schmaltzy as Brother Bear, a movie so awfully cheesy that it feels as if Disney actually drenched every single frame of it from top to toe in gooey melted Cheddar.

Kenai and Koda bond as they both go on a journey of self discovery... urgh!

Brother Bear is, without a doubt, the single most sickeningly soppy and sentimentally slushy Disney film I’ve seen so far.

The film, which is set slightly after the ice age in North America, is about Kenai (Phoenix), an Inuit teenager, who receives his sacred totem because he has finally come of age. His totem is, of course, a bear, and because a bear represents love, this means that he can only fully become a man once he has learnt to ‘love’.

It's understandable why Kenai is annoyed, as any teenage boy would be- who wants love as a totem? It’s just like if you were going to be one of Captain Planet’s Planeteers and you got heart- no one wants heart- everyone wants fire. So just to spite his older brothers Denahi (Raize) and Sitka (Sweeney), Kenai goes about proving that he is a ‘man’ in other ways. And in true Disney style, this means that people have to die horribly and everyone’s lives are destroyed, especially Kenai’s, as he inadvertently kills Sitka and is then transformed into a bear by Sitka’s aurora borealis spirit form.

Kenai is transformed- both figuratively and literally- into his bear totem of 'love'.

So now Kenai’s life is ruined, and he’s a bear, and all he wants to do is transform back into a human. But during his mission to change back into a human he meets a cute wise cracking baby bear called Koda (Suarez), who tags along on his quest that of course turns into a journey of self-discovery as Kenai finally learns to ‘love’. Urgh. It’s making me gag just thinking about it.

The entire tone of the film is depressing, and the ‘uplifting’ finale isn’t uplifting at all as everyone’s lives are still devastated, except now, they all learned a valuable life lesson about love, forgiveness and redemption. Urgh. As I said before, Brother Bear is super mushy. It’s not my type of movie at all.

So you may be surprised that I gave it a whooping three stars. This is because although it may not be my cup of tea, it isn’t technically a bad film, and doesn’t deserve to be downgraded just because it made me want to retch. I wish that I could find this kind of tacky sap nice, but I just can’t. I don’t like things laid on thick, and Brother Bear is a perfect example of transparent feel-good tat.

Which one is the monster? That is something Kenai will surely discover...

Brother Bear opens with a song, sung over the top of the animation, by a shrieking Tina Turner. This song, about spirits ‘n shit, is even hammier than The Circle of Life, a song it tries and fails spectacularly to replicate. But this doesn’t surprise me. None other than Phil Collins himself wrote the soundtrack. Just when I thought I would never have to sit through a film composed entirely of awful Phil Collins songs again, Disney asks him to do yet another soundtrack. Tarzan’s songs sucked, and Brother Bear’s are just as bad. Phil gets to wail out the second tune, which is irritating and unsurprisingly cheesy, and worse of all, gets lodged into your brain so badly that you want to take a drill to your temple just to flush it out. Other songs about doing something wrong and family are equally soppy, and are accurately placed at the slushiest parts of the movie. 

I don’t want to drone on and on about Phil Collin’s weak songs again, so I’ll try and stick to what I did like about Brother Bear. The animation is absolutely astounding. From the breath-taking mountains to the amazing animals: the images in this film are fantastic. I particularly liked the North American scenery (especially the waterfalls, lakes and glaciers) and the aurora borealis- which is really quite beautifully done. I also have to say that I did like the characters, and even though I wanted to hate Koda, I found myself warming to him.

Koda loves the aurora borealis, which is a beautiful addition to the movie.

The story itself, which is not as happy as you want it to be, is fairly interesting, if only because of the Native American aspects and the action scene on the glacier. The film really really labours the point of brotherly love and learning to love and forgive through love blah blah blah. We get it. We get that every single character either has a brother or wants a brother, because brothers are the best thing ever apparently. The two ethnically Canadian moose ‘brothers’ and mountain goats are shoved randomly into the movie as ‘comic relief’ (I wasn’t laughing) and to push the point of… what was it again? Oh yeah, brotherly love. As if I could forget what the film’s theme was.

Brother Bearis slathered in mountains of cheesy goodness that make it pretty sickening. But because of its fairly depressing tone, and the fact that it does have genuine heart, even though I don’t like admitting it, Brother Bear is not a terrible movie. If I was forced to watch it again, I wouldn’t mind too much. The fact that the ending isn’t particularly happy does annoy me, but then it is probably as happy as you can make a film in which every main character has a family member brutally killed within the first twenty minutes. The fact he stays a bear, the whole hand print thing and when they say that he had to become a bear to become a man had me reaching for the sick bucket. If I were rating Brother Bear on schmaltz factor, it would get five out of five.

I think that younger children would like Brother Bear: I can’t see older kids particularly enjoying it unless they love mountains and bears and stuff like that. The messages are unsubtly hammered home but probably appeal more to adults than children- I’m not sure that kids would entirely ‘get it’. I would have preferred something a bit more unusual e.g. Kenai at the mid-way point changing back into a human to then train Koda to be his bodyguard or something… but then that would have taken the film in a completely different direction, and it would mean no sequels or spin offs that have cute animals as the main characters. Also, we all know what happens when Disney tries too hard to be different… so perhaps it was good that they stayed true to themselves and kept Brother Bear fairly toned down.

Brother Bear is all about brotherly love...

People who relish ‘heart-warming’ tales of inspiration will probably appreciate Brother Bear. It is, after all, a literal and figurative journey of self-discovery, which really isn’t my taste. I like organically uplifting movies, not a blundering attack on the heart, mind and senses that tries its hardest to emotionally move me with the subtlety of a mallet.

AlthoughBrother Bear may be my highest rated Disney Dip movie yet, it is forgettable filler. Apart from the incredible animation, nothing to me really stands out about this, and I wouldn’t choose to see it again.

And interestingly enough, I have actually already seen Brother Bear before, many years ago, and remember nothing about it except that it was depressing and sappy.

And my memory was proven correct.