Set shortly after the ice age, the youngest of three Inuit brothers, Kenai is set to receive his totem, a symbol of the kind of man he’s supposed to become. He’s disappointed to receive the Bear of Love becoming the object of ridicule of his brother Denahi, but is encouraged by oldest brother Sitka. However not long after, Sitka is killed while confronting a bear (in a pretty unnecessary self-sacrifice) and on his own later quest of vengeance, Kenai kills it. But for doing this, he’s turned into a bear himself by the spirits in the Northern Lights. While being pursued by Denahi believing him to be the bear who killed both his brothers, Kenai is forced to travel with a cub called Koda to the mountain where the Lights are best visible where supposedly the spirits will be able to turn him back.
This movie gets off to a pretty promising start with the introduction to Native American culture that’s a better representation than Pocahontas. You really get a feel for this natural world, and the characters have personalities that aren’t politically motivated. You see this tribes’ customs, its belief system, reverence for nature, it has a wall where the men leave their hand-print as a mark (holy crap, I just realized The Good Dinosaur ripped off Brother Bear; why would The Good Dinosaur rip off Brother Bear??). But the story takes a nosedive when Kenai is turned into a bear. It starts going for cheap jokes and a less serious sensibility, and even though it’s tied into Native spirituality, the idea of people turning into animals is pretty corny. It hasn’t been done much in Disney, but nevertheless it feels like a worn-out plot device. The main character is paired with a kid who’s less a fitting successor to Lilo and more a wannabe Max from Goof Troop. It really feels like Disney’s got an identity crisis, both trying to be a modern animated comedy, the likes of which DreamWorks at the time was doing well, while also remaining a safe Disney movie. Because of that it plays out very predictably and makes little of an impression. You know these two opposites are going to bond and that Kenai will discover the true worth of his totem of love. Brother Bear says it’s a movie about brotherhood, but really it isn’t. It’s a movie about animal welfare. In terms of the brotherhood theme, it’s trying to convey an older sibling-younger sibling relationship possibly akin to Lilo and Nani. Considering that was one of the best received aspects of Lilo & Stitch it would make sense they’d try and replicate it here. But Kenai and Koda are only surrogate brothers and their relationship never feels believable. The movie was focussed on the wrong pair. It should have placed more emphasis on Kenai and Denahi’s relationship. Theirs is the brotherhood introduced first, why would the movie add a new “brother” figure when the main character already has two? In fact, Koda could have been cut altogether so the film could be about Kenai and Denahi’s turbulent relationship as one hunts the other as a bear. Something dramatic and interesting like The Fox and the Hound. Clearly those brothers are the ones with more chemistry, but sadly less marketability. But this movie isn’t really concerned with brotherhood as much the message on the evils of man hunting poor bears. We’ve seen variations of this theme dozens of times, from Disney and other kids entertainment and it’s pretty lacklustre by this point. I think the scene where they come across the cave painting of the man fighting a bear and Koda says “those monsters are really scary …especially with those sticks”, was when I’d had enough. It doesn’t even make sense, considering this is a movie about a culture that already reveres nature and wildlife more than most of us, and who rely on hunting to survive. At the end are they just going to stop killing bears? I’m sure a few of them are wearing bear fur throughout!
Joaquin Phoenix is a strange choice for the voice of Kenai. He’s not that good or bad, but to be honest I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was him (maybe I just haven’t seen enough of Phoenix’s movies). Though he’s the protagonist, Kenai’s mostly a plot device, his personality, motivations, and actions are merely there to get to a certain point. His growing fondness to Koda as I said doesn’t feel legitimate, and his attitude isn’t anything new. The only times he comes off as interesting are when he as a bear, has to face Denahi and the conflict of emotion in that. Again, that would have made for a much better story. As for Koda, oh boy…I’m sure the kid who voices him is a nice person and to be fair some of the poor characterizations can be blamed on the writing. But he and the character are awful. Rather than look to actual kids for inspiration, Disney went back to presumptions based on current trends. The result is a mix of all the worst qualities of young Simba (you know the stuff he developed out of after his father’s death) and that damn orange kitten from The Aristocats. He’s obnoxious, he thinks he’s cool, he won’t shut up, how Kenai came to care about him, I don’t know. Again Denahi is more interesting, voiced by Jason Raize (the original Simba of The Lion King on Broadway) and he deserved more screen-time. One of the few things Brother Bear does give us is Rick Moranis’ only film role since retiring in 1997, as he and Dave Thomas voice a pair of moose based on Bob and Doug McKenzie, their hit characters from SCTV. I love SCTV and seeing them together again as these characters is nice, but I really wish they were funnier. One of the charms of the Bob and Doug sketches was that they were just Moranis and Thomas improvising dialogue for the camera that never really went anywhere. Here, you can tell they’re scripted and the comedy suffers. Occasionally they’ll still get a laugh, but …really Moranis, you came back for this when we all just want to see Dark Helmet again?? The late great Michael Clarke Duncan is in this, so’s Greg Proops, Joan Copeland as the shaman-woman Tanana, and Estelle Harris is actually pretty funny as an elderly bear who thinks her husband’s dead.
You may recall from my review of Tarzan that I’m one of the few people who didn’t mind Phil Collins’ score for that film. That’s not quite the case this time round. The songs feel mostly generic and are definitely more distracting than in Tarzan. “Great Spirits” isn’t bad and “On My Way” would be okay if not for the fact that Koda sings parts of the lyrics incredibly badly. But none of the others are very good. The montages they’re played over, with the exception of “Great Spirits” don’t serve a purpose like in Tarzan and are clearly just excuses to use the songs. And the placing of the songs can be pretty poor. In particular “No Way Out” is a disaster. You remember in my Tarzan review I felt that putting the death of Kala’s kid in the middle of “Two Worlds” lessened the impact of the emotional moment, and felt like Disney putting the focus on Collins over the weight of the story? That’s nothing compared to this, where they literally play Collins’ song over Kenai’s big reveal to Koda that he killed his mother!! It’s supposed to be a big character moment for both of them, rife with emotion and confusion, but it’s drowned out by Collins’ singing. I kind of get the intent they were going for but it didn’t work, and made Collins the star over them. It’s incredibly irritating and even insulting!
Is there any good to the movie though? Well the animation is very pretty. This movie does succeed in capturing the beauty of nature as well as this early civilization. It compliments their belief system and mythology. The Aurora Borealis and incidental music surrounding it are captivating and the way they portray the animal spirits are really interesting. Any time the movie focuses on aspects of Native heritage rather than dumb interactions between Kenai and Koda and tired fish-out-of-water tropes, you can see the glimmer of a great movie. But even the ending which incorporates some of this isn’t done justice by the film’s premise. And oh yeah, we get those fake deleted scene things that Pixar was doing for a while. They’re …not funny.
Brother Bear has a few good elements in its animation, and some of the stuff at the beginning between the three brothers. But the choice to centre the plot on this relationship between Kenai and Koda when the real brothers’ relationship had so much more potential, and the message about the evils of man contrasted against innocent animal life is really forced. Add to that an incredibly annoying kid character, and a failure to make much of the story and key relationship interesting or funny, and you have a movie that really missed the mark, as well as the beginning of Disney’s downward spiral. This is the genesis of another dark period for Disney. Brother Bear may be bad, but I’m absolutely dreading what’s to come.
Next Week: Home on the Range (2004)
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