You know Basil, one way to save bandwidth would be to
not post a one sentence reaction to every single reply in the thread...
Well, my long and involved theatre experience with
Brother Bear was kind of interesting. I went to the nearest theatre at the earliest showing on Saturday - 1:45 pm. When I got there at 1:40, there was a line out the door.
Lotsa families turned up to see the film, nicely enough. But by the time I got to the booth, it was 2:00, so I opted to go to the 2:30 showing instead. To kill the time I grilled a manager about the aspect ratio - asking if they framed it correctly and whatnot. Hey - had to do
something to pass the time - even if it appears insanely geeky!
The first couple trailers played okay enough, but then the
Home on the Range trailer came on - silent, fuzzy, off-frame, and
backwards.
Projectionist puts up slides for a few minutes, but when they got it going, it was already 5 minutes or so into the film.
I know they can't exactly
rewind those giant reels of film once they get going, but it was enough to put me off. So I waited another half-hour to go to the 3:15 showing. Glad I did, too -
much bigger theatre, my pick of the seats, and - when it started playing - some smooth projection, for once. LOL
This print also had a
ton of trailers. They ran the gamut of holiday family films, pretty much -
Teacher's Pet, The Cat in the Hat, Cheaper by the Dozen, The Haunted Mansion, Back in Action, and
Home on the Range. All that was missing was
Elf.
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So after all that, the film finally started. And you know what? Boo. Boo-urns, I say. This truly
is a hodge-podge of previous films, Disney or not. It felt like some weird hybrid of
Ice Age and
The Bear, with elements of
Spirit and
The Lion King. I mean, watching cute cubby Koda's antics, I couldn't help thinking "Simba". That or "JTT".
And Sitka's eagle looked like he'd just flown out of the Cimarron Valley.
But anyways - just nitpicky stuff. The film on a whole just didn't grab me. Too much material, too much lame dialogue that just
screamed "benign". It was just
too sanitized and politically correct, all blunted down and puréed into a bland mash. No doubt there was a lot of moronic executive intrusion and focus-groups a-plenty that went into
this film's production. Those moose seem to be evidence of this. Anyone else think several of their sequences seemed "tacked-on"? It seems those two got high marks at early screenings, and we all know what that means. More moose stuff! MORE!! Let's have them doing yoga this time! >_<
And I'm sorry, but the emotional scenes were so schmaltzy, that there seemed to be a marquee proclaiming "CRY NOW!!" scrolling on the bottom of the screen. It got so sappy at points, I was craving pancakes. I mean - "Koda, I've done something very bad..."? C'mon!
The plot's pacing was pretty poor, I'd say. It's a bit too plodding. Several kids that were getting pretty twitchy through the last third or so. So much so that at one point a little girl behind me whined, "I wanna go home!" to her mom with 20 minutes of film left. O_o But then the plodding gave way to an extremely rushed third act. I mean, Koda forgave Kenai's major boo-boo a bit too quickly. It felt unnatural.
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Well, speaking of unnatural, that was another nag I had at the back of my head. Disney seemed pretty hack-happy with the rules of both nature and storytelling. I mean, what did Walt always stress? The
plausible impossible. That concept
includes making a film's theatrical license consistent. So if you're gonna make a film about sentient, talking animals set at the twilight of the Ice Age, then you gotta
sell that concept to your audience lock, stock, and barrel.
So, if this film takes place in the late Pleistocene, what's with the egregious amount of anachronisms? The wildlife and settings were so modern that, even though mammoths are depicted and sabre-tooth cats are referenced, they seem oddly out of place. It would have done the film some good if they had shown other megafauna of that era; how about some American lions? Camels? Dire wolves? Maybe some herds of quagga-like Western horses? Ground sloths, even? They could have at least blown up the bison to a rhino-like size and given them larger horns, to make them more like the species of the time. And, ahem, too bad that grizzlies didn't exist back then - the closest you got was
Arctodus simus, or
the short-faced bear. They could have plausibly used this species - the scale difference from human to bear would have been great to watch! ^_^ And it might have inspired some viewers to check out prehistoric mammals for themselves. *shrug*
Why is it, also, that all the cute furry critters can talk and are aware of events around them, but the Chum/Pink Salmon are nothing but silent, stupid prey? So much so that the film depicts various fish parts flying around and being played with during the whole Salmon Run sequence, without a care whatsoever. O_o Not saying I'm disturbed - just confused. Are salmon the cows of the bear world, or something? That lack of consistency is annoying.
The film did something similar with the human characters. Very little is known about the Paleo-Indians of that era; the most that's been discovered are their stone tools, really. Yet here we see a thriving and complex culture depicted. The beliefs and traditions have been lifted from modern-day Pacific Northwest culture and applied to these ancient and primitive people, apparently. The people of the Clovis age were mostly known for their skillfully-crafted
fluted points, which were used as spearheads. These, at least, are prominently and accurately displayed in the film. I think. *shrug*
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Alright, enough with the mauling. There's a silver lining to everything, right? I did enjoy the transformation sequence - mostly because of the haunting choir music in Inuit lyrics. I liked Kenai's initial cynicism - can you guess why?
And of course, as annoying and ill-fitting as the moose were, they were pretty funny. Especially Rutt. Yay for nerdy Canadians!
As always, the animation was superb. Very painterly, classic look to the backgrounds, and the animals weren't overly caricatured, which I liked. There were several wonderful, Chuck Jones-like expressions throughout; my favorite "mime" moment was when that branch fell on Kenai after he was freed from the snare - hilarious! So long and drawn out - you started to feel winded yourself.
The biggest thing I'm worried about with
Brother Bear is the "re-watchability" factor, which is what Nemo thrived on. Will this film get a good response and word of mouth? And subsequent revisits to the theatre over the holidays? Or will it be a "see-once", nothing-special film? 'Cause I sure as hell know I wasn't compelled to come back anytime soon. I bought an extra ticket to support the cause, anyway.
*looks up* Whoa - loooong post. O_O
