Double Feature Review: Brother Bear + Bonus Movie

Double Feature Review: Brother Bear + Mystery Meat (not literal meat)

Brother Bear was the third and final Disney movie to be animated at the Florida studio, and was about three Inuit brothers: Sitka, Denahi, and Kenai. Kenai has a prejudice for bears, as he sees them as thieves. After a fight with a bear, Sitka gets killed, and Kenai seeks for revenge. When he kills the same bear that killed Sitka, the spirits from 'the lights that touch the Earth' (what they call the Aurora borealis) turn Kenai into a bear, because his totem was a bear. Now Kenai has to make a journey to where 'the lights touch the Earth' to turn back into a human, but eventually, he learns that bears aren't as bad as he thought they were. He also befriends a bear cub named Koda, whose mother happened to be the bear that killed Sitka.

If you are reading this, Rachel, I hope I can point out a few positive things about this movie. I know you are not a fan of Brother Bear, but this movie has a special place in my heart. It was the first movie from Walt Disney Animation Studios I ever saw in theaters. I was born in 1996, so I was too young to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan, and Atlantis. I also chose not to see Lilo & Stitch in theaters because I used to have an insane phobia of seeing Earth from a satellite's point of view. However, when I saw Brother Bear for the first time in late 2003, I loved it and even got a few Brother Bear toys for Christmas that year.

Below is a list of things I appreciate about Brother Bear.

1. Rutt and Tuke can be funny.

 

Rutt and Tuke, the wisecracking moose duo voiced by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, were the traditional Disney sidekicks in this movie. I know some people find them annoying, but I think they can be funny sometimes. When I was younger, I thought the scene in which they were playing 'I Spy' was hilarious. In fact, I once played 'I Spy' with my bus driver and kept saying 'tree'. I think it drove him crazy, but I thought it was funny.

2. The message is wonderful and heartwarming, though a bit preachy to some.

At first, Kenai hates bears with a passion, but after he's turned into a bear, he realizes that bears are not enemies of man, but animals doing what they need to do to survive. I even remember having a Kenai plush (one that could change from a human to a bear) that said 'Bears aren't monsters. They're just like us.'

3. There's a hilarious cameo of Nemo the clownfish.

 

In the opening number "Great Spirits", while Denahi and Sitka are catching fish with a net, Kenai rides on a woolly mammoth and breaks the net. As soon as the pachyderm hits the net, Nemo can be seen for three frames. You have to press the 'Pause' button on your remote control multiple times until you see him.

4. The audio commentary is hilarious to listen to.
 
Those are Rutt and Tuke on the left and right sides of the screen.
When Brother Bear first premiered on DVD in 2004, it had an audio commentary with Rutt and Tuke. In the commentary, the two moose talk about numerous flaws in the movie. For example, they stated that none of this would've happened if Kenai just fixed the basket containing the fish so the bear wouldn't get it. My personal favorite line is during the credits, when the moose see the credits for the Disney Animation Paris Unit and say "Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't remember seeing anything about Paris in this movie!"

5. This movie had the involvement of Byron Howard.

Byron Howard is the co-director of Bolt with Chris Williams, Tangled with Nathan Greno, and Zootopia with Rich Moore, all three of which I love so much for different reasons. Before all that, however, Byron started out as an in-between animator on Pocahontas (the character).

He would later be a character animator on Yao in Mulan and the supervising animator of Cobra Bubbles in Lilo & Stitch. In Brother Bear, he was the supervising animator for Kenai (when he's a bear), and I personally think he did a good job. Other people involved with Brother Bear who would later contribute to the Second Disney Revival Era include Nathan Greno, Don Hall, and Tim Mertens.
I am also aware that Kenai can be unlikable at times, but according to Joaquin Phoenix, who voices Kenai, it's something that we can identify with because nobody's perfect.

Even though Brother Bear may not be some people's favorite's, I know an animated feature that's, in my opinion, even worse than Brother Bear that was released the same year: Rugrats Go Wild.

Rugrats Go Wild was a crossover movie of The Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys. For those who are unfamiliar, The Wild Thornberrys was a Nicktoon that ran from 1998 to 2004, and was about a family who traveled all over the world. Nigel Thornberry, the father of the family, hosts a nature documentary while his wife Marianne shoots it. Nigel has two daughters, Eliza and Debbie, as well as an adopted son named Donnie. Like her father, Eliza has a passion for animals, and even found a chimpanzee and named him Darwin. One day, after saving a trapped warthog, the warthog turned into a witch doctor and granted Eliza the ability to talk to animals. However, she has to keep it a secret and cannot tell any human being, except for her sister Debbie. While The Wild Thornberrys wasn't as popular as other Nicktoons at the time, like Hey Arnold or Spongebob, it was popular and successful enough to spawn a feature film, The Wild Thornberrys Movie, in late 2002. It managed to earn more money and better reviews than Disney's other animated feature that year, Treasure Planet.

Anyway, in Rugrats Go Wild, the Rugrats characters go on a cruise and get shipwrecked on a deserted island. The other people on the island happen to be the Thornberrys family, trying to film a rare species of leopard. When the babies get to meet Nigel Thornberry, whom they call Nigel Strawberry, he gets hit in the head with a coconut and thinks he's a baby. Also, Spike, the dog in The Rugrats, runs into Eliza and actually talks. To make it worse, he's voiced by Bruce Willis, which doesn't fit the character. That's like having Captain Hook in Walt Disney's Peter Pan being voiced by Cary Grant! Or having a Simpsons episode in which Santa's Little Helper talks and is voiced by David Schwimmer! Also, Eliza can talk to animals, but only wild animals. Also, there was already a Rugrats episode in which Spike talked: the episode "In the Dreamtime", in which Chuckie experiences his first dreams and can't distinguish reality from fantasy. In the first dream Chuckie has, the babies enter Spike's doghouse, which becomes a fancy mansion, and Spike could speak English with a British accent.
 

In my opinion, Rugrats Go Wild is a film that ruined the Rugrats franchise with a clumsy script and forgettable songs. I personally think they should've ended the franchise after Rugrats in Paris. In this situation, I would rather watch Brother Bear than Rugrats Go Wild. However, everyone has their own opinion.

Brother Bear rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Rugrats Go Wild rating: 2 stars out of 5.