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Brother
Bear
It's the
end of Disney Feature Animation as we know it. Don't bother
protesting - CEO Michael Eisner has already declared it to
be so.
Technically,
the studio still has one more 2D attempt, Home on the Range,
but they're rushing it out in early April in an effort to
clean house. So it may not be fair to put a heavy weight upon
Brother Bear, but it's unavoidable. If Disney's 2D
animation future has any hope at all (besides cheap sequels
from the TV division), it all really rests here.
At first,
the film looks like it might be up to the task. Establishing
an old wise man (Harold Gould) telling the story to the youth
of his tribe, the film dissolves into some incredibly beautiful
art direction.
Visually
sumptuous in its depiction of prehistoric Canada, the initial
scenes are daring for traditional Disney storytelling. They
still flirt with the fantastic, mostly due to the narration
explaining some of the tribal myths, but for the most part,
Brother Bear starts out with a solid grounding in realism.
(And again, incredible backgrounds in the vein of Maxfield
Parrish and others from The Brandywine School of Illustration
- a focus of animation head Roy E. Disney, as he tried to
insert that look into Treasure
Planet,
too.)
When
three brothers interact with nature, it's not in a typical
cartoony way. In an exciting confrontation with a bear, this
is no jamboree. The creature snarls, growls, and generally
looks like a real bear in all its imposing majesty.
But of
course, you've seen the ads or the posters, and you know this
just doesn't last. When Kenai (Joaquin Phoenix) tracks down
and kills the bear responsible for his brother's death, he
receives a lesson from the spirits of his ancestors. Even
the transformation scene has a nice sense of awe to it; we
may be veering straight into fantasy, but in a way that respects
the people being represented.
And then
the bear version of Kenai turns around. Hey, look at that
strangely expressive face, those big, googly eyes and that
misshapen but cuddly snout. Cripes! It's a CARTOON BEAR!
Not that
the third brother, Denahi (Jason Raize), notices. Despite
the fact that he tracked a real bear and now believes
it to have killed Kenai, he assumes that this new freak of
nature is the same beast. From that point on, in fact, everything
but the fish have this new more anthropomorphic mein.
Perhaps
this is just Kenai's viewpoint, you might argue. Since he
sees through bear eyes but with a human mind, he must be compensating.
Nope. In flashback, the first bear looks exactly the same
even when other bears talk about her. It's just weird, the
first little sign of a movie not exactly sure where it wants
to go but darned sure that it's going to follow the paths
of as many other successful Disney products as it can.
This
weakness doesn't destroy Brother Bear. It just leaves
one with the unsettled feeling that you almost saw something
that reached for greatness. Instead, it settles for a meandering
good-naturedness with a little life-lesson attached.
Granted,
this allows for the revival of a personal favorite comedy
team, the MacKenzie
Brothers (Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis), now in the guise
of a pair of moose. They wander in and out cracking wise in
their low-key way, effectively transplanting their characters
to the animal kingdom. It's amusing but at odds with the more
somber set-up.
Maybe
the powers-that-be felt they'd learned a lesson from Pocahontas.
That film dabbled in the mystical, but featured cartoony animals
that never spoke. By Disney's standards, the film bombed,
and of course it couldn't be because it simply wasn't very
good.
So again,
the movie reaches into the bag of tricks from past successes.
Phil Collins songs intrude upon the soundtrack, booming with
percussive intensity. On the surface, it's not a bad choice,
as it sort of fits with the idea of a primitive culture's
music. But if you never hear another Phil Collins song again,
you've still heard them all. Some of it gets disguised with
other artists singing, including The Blind Boys of Alabama,
but hey, it's still the Tarzan effect. One upbeat number
plays over a sequence of the bear equivalent of the land of
milk and honey - all the better to map out a future waterpark
attraction. Sorry, it's hard not to be cynical about this
sort of thing.
Just
as it's hard not to see the left hand doesn't know what the
right hand is doing. Why does Eisner see no point in 2D animation?
Because of the success of Pixar, whose work Disney distributes.
Heck, Brother Bear even copies a gag from Finding
Nemo and gets it wrong. We all know perfectly well
that seagulls are saying "MINE," not "FISH." Really, the problem
is that Disney doesn't seem to grasp that Pixar succeeds because,
well, that studio carries through on its promises to challenge
our imagination.
And so
this is the way Disney Feature Animation ends. Not with a
bang, but with a growl that should have been much more defiant.
Rating:
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