Review of Brother Bear (2003) by Aiysha A — 05 Sep 2013

The movie bear brother simply took my heart away. I really liked the concept of showing strong love bond between three brothers. It seriously made me almost cry when Sitka sacrificed his life for sake of his brothers. It is true that the movie was little unrealistic and seemed unoriginal but characters and dialogue delivery covered this flaw. The friendship of Koda and Kenai was so cute. It was fun watching them together fighting or playing. And when Kenai found out that he is the killer of Koda's mother was the most depressing moment of the movie. I loved the character of Tanana. It was so funny when she was checking out the kenai bear and said funnily that "Spirits don't make these kind of changes usually" overall the movie was entertaining and I don't think that I wasted my 85 minutes watching it. In my opinion, these kinds of movies should be created to develop a sense of love and care between siblings. Kids learn all the bad or good traits in their childhoods and carry them throughout their lives. The thing surprised me that why Kenai chose to be a bear forever. I understand that he knew that Koda needed him, but he could have stayed human and keep Koda with him. And his bear locket could do something that he would understand Koda's language. I mean he chose to be something that he was not used to be or comfortable with. He even hated bears and considered them monsters, but at the end he chose to be one of them. That really did not make sense to me. What about his brother? Who loved him so much and now he cannot even understand Kenai's language. Well, I was little left out at the end, but I liked the movie anyways.

This movie somehow relates to Native Indigenous religions because in this movie, they showed Tanana giving lockets to everyone based on their spirits which were animals. It is same with the Indigenous Religions; they have myths, which lessons are taught by tricksters. It says in the book Invitation to World Religions, "tricksters are animal figures that have adventures and engage in all manner of mischief" (Brodd, 35). This movie also showed a strong relationship of people with myths. The movie also has some similarities with African religions for example, Africans strongly believe in spirits of dead. They believe that people remain with them after their death and they can get advices from them or even communicate with them (Brodd, 63-64). In the movie Brother Bear, Kenai's brother Sitka became a dead spirit and communicated with him. Sitka the dead spirit helped Kenai when his own brother was going to kill him. So I think this movie has some compatibility with world religions.