Apparently that whole Mama Bear viscously protecting her cubs thing… Yeah… it’s true.
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“Bears” is the latest story documentary from Disney Nature. This one follows a mom and her two cubs adventuring through life between hibernations. Coincidentally, “adventuring through life between hibernations” is also the title of my autobiography. John C. Reilly steps in to do the narration in this, and not only gives us the information we need, but also voices the thoughts of our three teethy travelers. And since so much of the film depends on his performance, lets just start there.
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It’s great. Let’s even call it the best thing. Now, to be honest, at first when I heard his voice it felt a little goofy for what could be some serious moments in this doc, he’s no Morgan Freeman for sure. But overall, I think that ended up being an amazing thing. His voice is playful enough to really capture the character of these cubs as they experience their first year in this new world. That levity is welcome and some of his delivery in the funnier moments of their journey is downright hilarious. He also manages to capture the more intense moments as well, albeit by using more empathy than gravitas, but it seems to work just fine. Plus, this movie is absolutely stunning to look at. Every frame is thrillingly gorgeous with the colors and textures of the Alaskan wildlife jumping off the screen. Not to mention these cubs are about the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen, even if some of the adult bears (including mama bear) are more scary than cuddly and have some really intense confrontations. Another thing worth mentioning? The movie runs less than 80 minutes, which keeps things moving nice and fast and not taking up much more time than an hour show on TV.
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Which brings me to one of the issues I had with “Bears”, it often feels like a TV documentary special you would see on the Discovery Channel. Now, that’s not as much of a knock as you might think. Those docs are pretty good stuff. But it does make you wonder why you would shell out movie going money for something you could likely approximate through your local tv provider. The answer of course, is that it’s better on the big screen, but it still difficult to get past that psychological hurdle that you might be paying for the bear when you could get the growl for free. More than that though, if anything bothered me about the movie it was that some of the “dramatic tension” felt a bit forced and manipulated to me. I mean, I know they have to tell a story, but there were a couple moments here that seemed to rely on some overly dramatic editing and story massage of what was probably just a normal day in the woods for our gang.
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At the end of the day, “Bears” is a beautiful, compelling documentary with some great voice over and incredible images. It’s a wonderful experience even if a little story manipulation brings it down to a solid B+
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Thanks for checking out this Your Movie Friend review, stay tuned for this review’s “Best Ever” challenge here in bit but first, I’m going to put up some stuff you can click over in this area. If you’d like to subscribe, which I would much appreciate, you can do so by clicking the big gray subscribe button. Want to see more? You can click to see my reviews this week of Transcendance, Heaven is for Real, or A Haunted House 2. You can also Click the logo up here to go to yourmoviefriend.com where you can search by title for reviews. And finally this review’s “Best Ever” Challenge, where you name the best movie ever in a particular category and also try to identify my choice. What is the “the best movie ever featuring a bear”. Wow, lots of good ones to choose from, but it’s hard for me to pick anything other than the one that also featured a cowboy and an astronaut. Drop your own answer and a guess at mine in the comments and first person to guess mine gets a point! Thanks and please subscribe!