BEARS PG 78 Minutes Directors: Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey
CAST John C. Reilly...(Voice Over) Bears
Look for the bare necessities. The simple bare necessities Forget about your worries and your strife I mean the bare necessities That's why a bear can rest at ease With just the bare necessities of life -THE JUNGLE BOOK
Check It Out!
Before I get started, I'd like to emphasize that this film really is about Bears, and not a particular sexual preference.
If you take a close look at Bears, you'll notice that they're really just fat wolves. Or put another way: bears are wolves in bears' clothing, but I digress.
BEARS is a fascinating account on the unbearable plight of brown bears in Alaska. They have it tough. Almost as tough as penguins...from that MADAGASCAR cartoon.
REAL CAST MEMBERS
Sky-Mamma bear, the main character. She's looking for salmon...and trouble. Mostly salmon though, otherwise she and her cubs won't survive the winter.
Scout-He's a cub who's far too adventurous for his own good.
Chinook-Little sister, not a risk taker.
Magnus-Don't mess with the alpha. Something tells me he could survive a shot-gun to the head, and kill you afterwards. He's a not-so-gentle-Ben.
Tikaani-Literally, the lone wolf, and not in a good way.
Featuring...John C. Reilly as a Morgan Freeman-type guy.
Also, there's a nameless raven who plays a crucial role in finding food for Sky. But the 'black bird singing in the dead of night' gets no love from these heartless documentarians. I would have named the bird Flacco, or Symone.
We know Sky is the mother. But I wonder who the father is. He was definitely present at some point in the movie. It just doesn't seem right. I think raising cubs would be easier with two parents.
So we get another inoffensive family movie from Disney. But I can't complain this time, I like nature documentaries. Nature films are getting better lately, ever since that NORTH AMERICA program aired. Now, that's a show worth watching. Oh man, Tom Selleck really set a new standard for voice over work on animal shows.
Problems?
There were only a couple of problems with this movie. I didn't like how that American Family Insurance song got incorporated in the soundtrack. Secondly, I wish these bears could talk.
Things I Now Know
BEARS is an informative documentary. I learned many new things about brown bears. Like they don't eat Teddy Grahams, or picnic baskets, and they don't have money to buy food from their car wash business.
Hibernation
BEAR shows you the plight of the brown bear, in a way Winnie The Pooh never could. I've seen every bear movie. And by far, BEAR is the best bear movie I've seen, and I'm including THE COUNTRY BEARS and the BAD NEWS BEARS (and its respective sequels). After seeing this movie, I now know what that bear patch on my cub scout uniform actually represents.
Final Verdict: 88 out of 100