Review: Brother Bear

If the spirit world’s judgement is all eye-for-an-eye, it bears mentioning that there’s an underlying sexism to the film.

Brother Bear
Photo: Walt Disney Pictures

In a time when wooly mammoths still existed, a Native American teenager (no, he’s not Cro Magnon) anxiously awaits the initiation ceremony that will usher him into manhood. When his granny gives him a “love” totem, his older brothers dutifully bust his balls. Later, Kenai (Joaquin Phoenix) is magically transformed into a furrier, cuter incarnation of the same scary bear that killed his brother, and for the rest of Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker’s animated feature Brother Bear he has to learn to get “in touch with his totem.”

In order to make this story as accessible as possible for its young audience, this terrible, dorky Disney toon reduces the spirit world of the film’s so-called Native Americans. Forget that the Eden-like afterlife of the film is a soulless light show in the sky. More dangerous are the implications of everyone’s vested interest in that spirit world and vice versa. Kenai’s granny is connected enough to the rave in the sky to know that the boy has been turned into a bear but seemingly forgets to tell the boy’s brother, Denahi (Jason Raize), about the transformation.

This perpetuates a series of whoopsy-daisy misunderstandings that only serve to reinforce the notion that the earth gods are vengeful. If the spirit world’s judgement is all eye-for-an-eye, it bears mentioning that there’s an underlying sexism to the film. (Here, femininity is likened both to weakness and love.) When the thoroughly modern teens of the film poke fun of Kenai for getting a girly totem, they all but stop short of calling him a “faggot.”

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There’s an obvious contempt to Sitka’s insult that Kenai needs to connect with his totem (read: feminine side), one that’s further emphasized by Kenai’s bizarre transsexual transformation and nurturing relationship to an adorable bear cub named Koda (Jeremy Suarez). One can only imagine what the transcendent effect of the film could have been if the animals didn’t speak, or if “natives” weren’t so actively engaged in living out a schematic moral plan. The supporting comedy troupe of animal goofballs (essentially a smorgasboard of ethnic stereotypes and cultural clichés, from Italian-American rams to surfer-dude bears) and the embarrassing Earth Mother chants by Phil Collins further remove us from the world of the sacred past and straight into a Disney marketeer’s cubicle.

Score: 
 Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Suarez, Jason Raiz, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, D.B. Sweeney, Joan Copeland, Michael Clarke Duncan  Director: Aaron Blaise, Robert Walker  Screenwriter: Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman  Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures  Running Time: 85 min  Rating: G  Year: 2003  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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